It Takes a Strong Man to Make a Tender Chicken

One time while in Liquor Land in Boston, I was telling the story to a whiskey rep about how I got made fun of for adding ice to my bourbon. He told me, "It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken."

While I was on Martha's Vineyard, Sami gave me some lavender. I'm hoping for more so Noel and I can use it in this year's Christmas Spirit. At first I was thinking I'd infuse my own olive oil with this batch. By the time I got off the ferry in Falmouth, I had come up with a meal that was blog quality: lemon lavender chicken. Monday I was in Melrose, talking to one of my favorite foodies, Rebecca, at Becon Hill Wine and Gorumet. She mentioned how she had just sold out of a lemon olive oil she sells. As I drove away, I couldn't get the oil out of my mind and it came to me: infuse my own lemon olive oil. It was pretty easy, and I really feel it made this meal more gourmet, and I get bragging rights that I took the time to infuse the oil.

Tuesday night I made the oil.
THE OIL:
First you need the zest of two lemons (about a cup give or take). I don't have a zest tool (WTF I don't have something? Don't worry it's now on the list near the top!) so I used a cheese grater. In a sauce pan I added one cup oil, the lemon and cooked it on low for 15 minutes making sure to stir every few minutes. Then I let it sit for two hours. About 10 minutes into the resting I decided to add a tablespoon lavender, I wish I had thought about this before I started. After the two hours I poured the oil into my oil holder, it's a dark red ceramic jar, perfect so no sun light can cause the lemon oil to go bad. So easy, so much fun and I will do this over and over again.

THE CHICKEN:
So after the oil was done I took two tablespoons of the lemon/lavender mix and added a tablespoon fresh lavender, a teaspoon pink peppercorns and half teaspoon sea salt (I added the fresh items to the mortar and crushed them up a little). I put them all in a ziplock bag with a 1/4 cup infused olive oil and four chicken thighs and marinated them over night.

All day I had chicken on the brain, I could't wait to make this meal that I have been thinking about since Sunday. When I started dinner pre-heated the oven to 400. I stuck a meat thermometer in one of thighs (I don't like going off time I rather know my meat is done especially chicken! Thighs need to be at 175F.) and stuck it in the oven. After the temperature got to around 80F (it started at 55F) I dropped the heat down to 350F and covered the chicken with tin foil. Right after that was done I started the wild rice. I love wild rice it goes so well with everything and makes it feel more special of a meal. When the chicken got to 150F I uncovered the chicken. By that time the rice was done and I started the summer squash. I cut the squash with the mandolin and pan fried them in the lemon oil, three minutes a side. They came great and had a small hint of caramel. The whole meal came out better than I could have ever imagined. The chicken was little more lemon and less lavender than I had hoped for but cooked wise it was PERFECT! Tender and juicy, just perfect!!

The wine tonight was harder than I thought. Right away I wanted to drink a Gamay with it. Gamay is famous for being the only grape from Beaujolais. It's a weird grape, similarish to Pinot Noir, well kinda. They can be very fragrant, fruit forward and fresh, floral esters. When young they can be tart and are not a grape that is known for aging. I myself am not a huge fan of the wines of Beaujolais but the Gamay from the Lorie Valley can be more lively and tarter. So I went out looking for a Lorie Valley Gamay. None of the stores that I visited or called had one. I was real disappointed until I found a bottle of Cinsault at the Wine Emporium on Columbus Ave. I have never seen a bottle of single varietal Cinsault before and Laura the wine buyer was sure the wine would go with the meal. I was more than excited to try this one, Domaine Des Terres Falmet. It's a very simple yet delightful wine. It has a very nice floral nose with hints of lavender and spice and the palate has wonderful cherries, herbs and pepper. It went awesome with the meal and was a great addition to my off the beaten path wines.

The Love of Shucking and Wine

Noel and I had a great weekend on Martha's Vineyard visiting our friends Sami J and Erik. They live year round on the island so all we have to do is get our asses to the island and we have, not only have a place to stay, but awesome tour guides to shuttle us around the island. Sami is a great garden artist on the island. She has many famous and rich clients that depend on her to make their million dollar homes look even more outstanding. Erik is an all around outdoorsman. He runs a very cool and very successful kayak tour on the island, Martha's Vineyard Eco Adventure. If you are ever on the island make sure to take a tour, he grew up on the island and knows it like the back of his hand.

The first night after dinner and a few bottles of wine we went down Lambert's Cove it's a bioluminescence beach. As we played in the water, we made the ocean glitter in color. It was so magical!! Saturday we went to State Beach, but the most amazing thunderstorm rolled over us and we had to vacate the beach bumming for a few hours. When we did get back to the ocean we went to a small beach near their house. It was very picturesque beach in the harbor over looking the Cape. After a little sun bathing, I went out and braved the cold Atlantic water. Later on that night we made it to a local food truck, the Artcliff Diner. This when I realized how cool and hip Martha's Vineyard really is. I had a lobster taco that was pretty good, the pig sandwich I also got was outstanding. After a fierce round of Apples to Apples (I didn't win, didn't even come close), we ended the night at Backdoor Donuts. They make an apple fritter that men would kill over!! You can smell this place blocks away. They open at 730pm, that's right-  they open at night and they sell out of the backdoor of Martha's Vineyard Gourmet Cafe and Bakery. They make the donuts and fritters fresh, always making sure they are available for the hungry fans, until they close at midnight. There is always a batch in the oven, so they come out warm, and just melt in your mouth. These people have something here, open a bakery late at night, make warm, fresh, donuts for all the drunks and late night munchers of the world, just genius. This place is a must go to next time you are on the island. The last day we spent hanging around Oak Bluffs shopping, having lunch and going to the arcade. Noel bought some really good fudge from Murdicks and I got a really cool clay whistle made in Peru made in the shape of an owl. To avoid traffic going home, Noel and I decided to set the GPS to avoid highways and went back roads home to have one more adventure on our perfect weekend.  

Sami J is a huge foodie and a wonderful chef. She made us mussels in coconut milk that would knock your socks off. We also had Cherrystones, for those of you that don't know your raw bar menu, Cherrystones are a type of clam that are delightful raw. They are have light salty flavor and the meat is a bit sweet and chewy. On the island clams are cheap, about $3 a pound, and Sami J knows how to shuck them! She even taught me!! Saturday on our way back to Sam's house during the thunder storm I decided I wanted more clams. There was so much traffic, Sami left her windows open and we really didn't have time to stop, but as I said traffic was real bad. I jumped out of the car ran in ordered clams, when I went to pay I realize my wallet was in the car, so I had to run after the car to grab money, run back to pay for the clams and get back to the car all before they hit the stop sign (Sami did pull over but only for a minute or two). It was a great Chinese fire drill style move and I was able to buy 18 more clams. As soon as we got back I couldn't wait to open all of them. I got pretty good at it!!

Holding a clam in your hand with the point of the shell facing away from you use a pairing knife, find the edge of the two shells and lightly force the knife in the clam (making sure not to cut yourself) and pull it straight across the two sides until you have cut the mussels and opened the shell. Then cut around making sure get up all the claim, squeeze  lemon or a lime in with the meat and enjoy.

For the wine the first night I made sure to bring us a bottle of Durenburg L&T Gruner Veltliner. The L&T stand for light and dry. This wine is great wine for a hot summer night and shell fish dinner. Very crisp with citrus and light apple fruit flavor, this wine is very food friendly and can pair well with a lot of the foods that are difficult to pair wine with, like asparagus and artichokes. It was a perfect pick for Cherrystones and mussels dinner. Gruner Veltliner is the most widely grown grape in Austria. Slowly over the years the quality of this wine really began to shine. It keeps on with my whole drink something different. Gruner Veltliner is the next Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio. This wine will make everyone happy, from the old ladys that need their glass of Pinot Grigio ever night, to the real wine lover.

Sami J and Erik thank you for the great weekend! I can't wait to make lavender chicken with some of the lavender you gave us! Noel and I were talking on the boat ride back to the main land and next we want to take the last boat out of town and cook you two a nice Sunday night meal!! And Chef Timmy don't think bacon pesto won't be on the menu, it's my new signature dish!!

Your Eyes Say Yes and Your Mouth Says Gnocchi

I am a big fan of sauces. If you have seen me lately you would know I have become what some would say, pudgy. Noel and I bought some gnocchi a few weeks ago from Russo's. Today was finally the day it needed to be cooked. I was actually threatened with death if I did not make the potato dumplings. I decided quickly that I wanted to make my own sauce with the meal. It didn't take long before I knew I was going to make a vodka sauce. I have master many other sauces, how hard could it be? Right!? Let me tell you, it was real easy and it came out great. Real restaurant quality stuff here. As we were eating dinner, it was Noel trying to come up with the name of this blog post. I started off wanting to make the gnocchi the side dish, but as I started cooking I realized I had a lot of gnocchi, so the meatatarian in me made the steak the side dish. While at Shaws I bought a family size package of baby steaks. Eight tiny little steaks all about an ounce in size.

So vodka sauce is pretty easy to make and you don't need much. Allrecipes.com has a very easy basic one that I went off of. Like I said last post I like to take a recipe and Dan it up a little.

The Sauce
1/2 cup vodka (I used a potato vodka Vesica)
1/2 onion chopped
large clove garlic minced
1/4 cup butter
14 oz can diced tomato (I used fire roasted garlic)
basil
oreganoal
1/2 pint light cream
1/2 cup parmesan cheese

In a sauce pan melt the better on medium heat. Add the garlic and onion until onion is translucent. Add the half cup vodka and cook for about 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes, and herbs and cook for 20 minutes. Stir in the light cream and parmesan, you wanna make sure the cheese really blends with the cream, and cook about 20 more minutes. The last 20 minutes I started the water and cooked the gnocchi. Once the water is boiling they only take two to three minutes. They even start to float when they are done. Foolproof!!

The steak was also easy. I went off a recipe from Alton Brown on foodnetwork.com.
SO EASY:
Take a skillet and stick it in the oven. Turn the oven to 500. When it reached 500 take the skillet out of the oven and put it on a burner on high. Take the steaks and rub a small amount of canola oil and season both sides with sea salt. Cook 30 seconds each side, then stick them back in the oven and cook for two minutes each side. Then let it rest for a few minutes. Perfect medium-rare steak. Thank Alton Brown you are a hero to many of us wanna be chefs!!

Tonight's wine comes by recommendation of the manager at Winchester Wine and Spirits. Justin has a love of the obscure grapes, the grapes that just aren't on the normal path. When I told him of the Pinot Meunier I had last night he turned me on to a Spanish Petit Verdot. Petit Verdot is one the major blending grapes in Bordeaux. It is used in blends as a flavor and tannin boaster, as it is a big, dark, dense fruit grape. This bottle tonight took a long time to open. I contemplated decanting the wine a few times but in the end decided to see where the grape would take me. In the beginning there was a dark inky, stew of hot, tannin, fruity mess, but as it opened the tannin surprisingly calmed down and it became a pleasant spicy cigar box with dark fruit. A great wine, I just wish I had turned on the AC before opening this bottle. Nothing like high heat and humidity to go with such a large wine. The next time I am at someones house grilling red meats, especially lamb I will go and find another bottle of Petit Verdot. Thank Justin for the outside the box pick!!
 

Ratat what?

Have you ever seen the movie Ratatouille? It's a movie than any of us wanna be chefs can relate to. I feel as though I am Remy many times as I master different recipes. For a while now, I have wanted to make ratatouille, and what better time than summer time? If you don't know what this is, it is a classic peasant dish from France. Comfort food made from veggies. Basic idea: take a bunch of summer veggies, squashes, eggplant, tomato...well you get the idea. You cut them all up and bake it. It's like meatloaf but with veggies. There is an issue with the this classic dish- NO MEAT. So, I decided I would add some. Flash back to a few days ago, my buddy Tom and I meet at 7's (a small bar in Beacon Hill), we meet there often after work and split a pitcher, usually two. I told Tom of my want to make ratatouille, but how it involved no meat. As we finished the first pitcher and waited for the second, I tossed out ideas to my foodie friend. Beef? Chicken? Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: BACON! *SIDE NOTE* For those that just started reading my blog, you may not know but I have a bacon addiction. So what would be a good way to use the bacon to its full potential? It was like the angels spoke to me: "Bacon Pesto." Bacon what? "You can't do that!" people said, "it's just not right." All I can say to them is: Suck it! With a quick change in recipe, I made what may have been the world's first Bacon Pesto.

WHAT YOU NEED
almost pound of bacon, enough to get 1/4 cup bacon fat
handful basil, about 20 leafs
handful walnuts
1/2 cup Stilliton blue cheese
1/4 cup olive oil, I found a scallion infused olive oil at Russo's that worked great!!

Cut the bacon in to one inch squares. Slowly render the fat off the bacon in a cast-iron skillet on low heat. Every so often, empty the fat into a measuring cup. When done, put the bacon aside to use in the ratatouille. In a pestal and mortar, just grind up the basil. Add the walnuts and blue cheese, and keep grinding into a paste. Add the bacon fat and olive oil. And there you go! You have bacon pesto. And what do you do with bacon pesto? Well, I replaced the pesto with most of the olive oil that you would use in the ratatouille. This dish is real easy to make.

WHAT YOU NEED
Now there is no true recipe for ratatouille, it is comfort food use what ever you want this is what I used
eggplant
summer squash
golden zucchini
cousa squash
red pepper
yellow pepper
orange pepper
onion
tomato
bacon
yam

Pre-heat oven 375. Slice all the veggie with a mandolin. Make sure to slice the yam thinner than the rest, as it take longer to cook. After that, in a cassarole dish, start layering the veggies. I did yam, golden zucchini, layer of pesto, red pepper, yellow pepper, orange pepper, summer squash, cousa squash, eggplant tomato, pesto, bacon, onions, pesto, repeat. I made sure to have the bacon in the middle and only did that step once. Cook for 55 minutes. When it was done I let it rest for five minutes and made a plain couscous to serve with the dish. Voila! A French classic made the Dan way. The bacon, which I cooked until cris,p came back to life and was a little chewy. But it did give its flavor to the dish.

The wine that I picked with this meal is a special one. While waiting to talk to Frank and Ray at Pairings in Winchester, I noticed they had a Pinot Meunier. Pairings is a cute gourmet wine shop in Winchester. Lorie and Ray started the store about a year ago and have a great shop. I have bought spice, herbs and cheese from them before (I bought the blue cheese from them for the Bacon Pesto). Pinot Meunier is famous for being one of the three grapes used in Champagne. I have never seen one in a still wine, I didn't even know they grew the grape in Oregon. So Saturday when I went back to conduct a wine tasting I had to buy a bottle of the  Willa Kenzie Estate Willamette Valley Pinot Meunier. This wine is great, a little pricey at $29 but then again it's not a grape that you can find in your normal liquor shop, let alone a fine wine shop. This bottle had great berry fruits (cranberry, blueberry and raspberry), a hint of earth and spice with a nice touch of dried roses. It has more acid than you would get from most wines but along with the silky tannin it helps to balance the fruit. This is a wine that I don't expect to find again for a while and that is sad.

In life I find it more fun to change the recipe and find wines that you are not going to always find. Most people would find a recipe online and would follow it to the letter. Me, I like to treat cooking more like an Art than a Science. True artist can't truly be taught to make a masterpiece it comes from within. I add things that I think could make the meal different, if not better. It may not come out great all the time, but sometimes you really knock it out of the park, i.e. BACON PESTO. Same with wine. Why always drink the same thing? Why care about how many points someone else thought the wine should have? Experiment, have fun, enjoy life. Break down the box that you are in and start living life.

Cocoa-Rubbed Pork Chops, a Tuesday Night Home Run

Wow, two meals in a row that I feel are BLOG quality. I wasn't looking to have a meal of this proportion tonight. It all started in Shaws when Noel and I got got pork chops to be just a quick and easy dinner. A little salt, a little pepper, throw them in the broiler and eight to ten minutes later you have a quick meal. When I got home from work today I looked up pork chops on Google and found porkchoprecipes.net. What an excellently little website! Sweet and sour pork chops, pork chops in a white wine sauce (saved that one for later) and many more recipes. I was in pork chop heaven then I saw it; typed across my screen was Cocoa-Rubbed Pork Chops. I mean, I heard the angels sing when I saw this recipe. I had to make it. First, I had to get a few things: Wine (always need wine), onion powder and bacon. I knew that I had to make a great side dish that would go well with the cocoa pork chop, so I came up with a bacon, carrot, brussel sprouts and onion medley and from Far East I made the toasted almond rice pilaf. I didn't have bacon in the house (WTF!?! No bacon in the house? Look its summer, its hot, and the bacon I like at Russo's has been expensive. So back off!) So, I made my way to Savenor's in Beacon Hill. This place has everything. I mean everything- bear, yak, rattlesnake, etc. They also are willing to sell you two lonely pieces of bacon.

What you need:
the pork chops:
2 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs onion powder
1 tbs unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp ground red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
2-4 thick cut pork chops
the veggies:
5 brussel sprouts cut into quaters
1 large carrot cut 1 inch pieces then cut into quaters
2 cipollini onions cut into quaters
2 slices of bacon minced

First, I started the Far East Toasted Almond Rice Pilaf. It takes about 20 minutes to make, so after I have it started I set a timer for 10 minutes. When the timer went off I started the bacon. After about five minutes I added the carrots. I reset the timer for four minutes and started cooking the pork chops. I took about two tablespoons of fat from the bacon I was cooking with the veggies and warmed it up in a large cast iron skillet. After coating both pork chops, I cooked the chops for four minutes on each side (using a meat thermometer 150 degrees). After I flipped the pork chops, I added the onions and brussel sprouts to the bacon and carrots. After the pork chops finished, I took the rice and pork chops off the heat, gave the meat a few minutes to rest, and let the veggie slowly roast. This meal was a home run!! Sorry, watching the All Star Game. The meat was out of this world. A little spicy cocoa thing going on. The bacon, carrot, brussel sprout mix was awesome!!! I let the carrots cook a long time in the bacon fat and they were the star of the veggie dish. The brussel sprout got a char on them, and in the rice I used a scallion infused olive oil that made the box rice sing!! What a meal for a Tuesday night!!

After I decided that I was going to make this meal, I started thinking about what wine I pair with it. I wasn't quite convinced the grape; I was divided Malbec, Carmenere, Cabernet, or Syrah, so I texted my buddy Chef Timmy for advice. He told me to go with a Malbec because they can have "a nice cocoa tinge to them". So I walked down to Beacon Hill Wine and Spirits in my hood. Nicky was working, so I asked him what Malbec he really likes, and he picked Kaiken from Mendoza. Great pick at $15.99!! Had the nice fresh dark fruit with tobacco and mocha. I don't drink a lot of Argentina Malbec's. I mean, come on, I sell Viu Manent in Chile, and their Reserve Malbec is great, plus I'm kinda of bored with Malbec. But this bottle of wine was a delightful change. It went great with the meal and with the rest of the All Star Game. Go AMERICAN LEAGUE!!

Stir It Up

Not every dinner that I cook has to take a long time, have many steps, or cost a ton. Noel and I love stir-fry. It's easy, good, and thanks to our friends at Russo's, is one of the cheapest meals we make each week. First you must have a wok. Noel found ours at T.J. Maxx; we find a lot of our kitchen gear there. The last one I had I got at Ikea. Needless to say, they tend to be cheap and can be the most used pot in your kitchen.  I have found that I like to use canola oil instead of vegetable oil and keep the amount of ingedents down. I like no more than three veggies, and I try and get them to be different colors (come on, it's more fun to have a colorful dinner. Isn't it?), a pepper or two, garlic, shallots, and a meat (you don't really need the meat, I am just a meatatarian). A stir-fry is also a great summertime dish, as you have a better choice of veggies, and its a light meal.While I was at Russo's last week, I was able to check out more of their oils. I found a Tangerine Oil from Boyajian and knew that I wanted to make a Tangarine Chicken Stir-fry.

Here What You Need
1 medium carrot sliced long wide pieces
dozen or more snap peas
1 red pepper cut into long slices
1 cubanelle pepper cut into long slices
1 clove garlic minced
1 shallot sliced
hand full beans sprouts
4 tablespoons canola oil (enough to coat the bottom of the wok)
3/4-pound of chicken breast cutlets
tangerine oil
salt
crushed red pepper flakes

First I marinated the chicken in tangerine oil for 45 minutes. Then coat the bottom of the Wok with the canola  oil. I wait a few minutes to let the oil warm and add the chicken. Cook for about a two minutes and add the garlic, shallots, carrot, red pepper flakes and sea salt. After about two minutes toss in the peppers. Basically from this point on, you are adding the veggies one at time letting the ones that need more time to cook first. I usually let a minute or two between each. After all the veggies are added, I cover it for another two to three minutes to let it all steam together. And there you go: a great weekday meal that took less than 15 minutes to make. Its so quick that I usually forget to cook any rice or noodle dish as a side. Ooops. Doesn't matter, this is a great healthy meal. Most veggies all go well together, so what you can use is endless, which is what makes this an easy meal to have every week, or even two or three times a week.  This was the first time I used the tangerine oil, next time I would add a little more heat to off-set the sweetness of the oil, but the oil really did a number on the chicken and it tasted great!!

So I wasn't in the mood for a full bottle of wine tonight. Last night however Noel and I did have a bottle while we sat on the couch watching a movie. Noel is a fan of sweet wines. Over the years I have introduced her to Riesling, Chenin Blanc, Sancerre and Moscato. The Muscat grape is a very sweet grape that is grown all around the world for wine, table grapes and raisins. As a wine it is known for it sweet floral aromas. In Italy some of the wines made from Muscato are made in a light fizzy, low alcohol style that is delightfully, Luna Nuda was no different. The bubbles make for a fun drink and the very floral, grape and apple fruit make it extremely easy to drink, as Noel and I found out in about a half hour.  

Pancetta the New Frontier

I am not a big fan of Italian food or Italian wines so this post is about just that. Noel and I bought some pancetta at one of our recent visits to Russo's. I decided to make a Cabonara sauce to go with the pancetta, so I quickly looked up a recipe on my phone while at the market to make sure that I got everything I needed while I was out. The joy of smart phones, I always look up recipes while shopping, it's great I let the shopping tell me what to get, not the recipe. Tonight's meal came from my favorite website Foodnetwork.com, and is courtsey Tyler Florence, Spaghetti alla Carbonara. I have made a few Alfedro sauces but never a carbonara so needless to say I was excited to try. This sauce and meal was very easy to make and took no time to make.

What you need:

1 Box spaghetti 

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 ounces pancetta (aka Italian BACON!!!!) cubed into small pieces

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more for serving

2 Eggs

Fresh ground pepper

1 Handful fresh chopped parsley

Boil salt water for the pasta. After its starts to cook (should take about eight minutes so start the next phase about five minutes later) heat the oil on medium heat in a deep skillet and add the pancetta. Cook about three minutes until the pancetta is crispy and fat is rendered. Add the garlic until the kitchen smells like Italy (about one minute). By this point the pasta should be done, drain it (but keep half cup of the water to add to sauce when done) and add it to the skillet for about two minutes and toss it so the pasta gets coated in the yummy pancetta fat. As this is happening take take the two eggs and Parmigiano-Reggiano and whisk it together making sure to break up any large chunks. Take the the skillet off the heat and quickly whisk in the cheese/egg mixture and slowly add the left over water to help thin out the sauce. Mangia!!! I felt like I had just ordered this from The North End. At first Noel thought this may be to much garlic but it came out perfect. This may help me change my view on Italian food.

The wine that went with dinner tonight was La Botte Dell'Abate a Montepulciano D'Abruzzo. I had a wine tasting at Greenwood Wine and Spirits in Wakefeild. Joanne, the manager, was there, so before she left for the day, I asked her for her recommendation. She too is not a huge Italian wine fan, even though she herself  is Italian-American, so when she said this was a good wine I knew it was the one for tonight. This was a good wine for the price ($13.99). It has lot of full, rich dried cherries, leather and smokey cured meats, with a nice long sweet herbal finish and soft tannin. This is a Riserva wine, in Italy that means it has been barrel-aged

in large oak casks, which helps give it a nice, spicy fragrance and softer tannin. Although I am not a huge fan of Italian wines, I am a fan of this wine.   

Happy Birthday America

Yesterday was my favorite holiday of the year, the Fourth of July. I love Independence Day!! All the other holidays through out the year are way too commerical or just don't matter. Valentines Day sucks, New Years Day  I mean come on is that even a real holiday and Christmas, it's now owned by the retailers. The Fourth of July has everything you could ever want. People (friends and family) usually get together have a BBQ and watch fireworks all while celebrating this great country of ours. I usually watch what ever the History Channel has on about the USA until Noel makes me turn it off and help clean for the party, in past years we have walked the Freedom Trail but this year was just too hot for everyone else to come with me. Noel and I have lived in Beacon Hill for two years and our roof has an excellent view of the Charles river and the Boston POPS Fireworks Spectacular. We go up to the roof with a radio and get to listen to the POPS and watch the fireworks with out having to be in the middle of the craziness. This being the last year we have this view, we knew we had to have a party. Most people would have a BBQ, but we don't even have a cement slab to be able to set up a grill and setting one up on the roof is illegal in the City of Boston. A few years ago for Christmas Noel got me a deep fryer, so instead of having a BBQ we had a Fry party.

We came up with a killer menu. Fried Zucchini fries, sweet potato chips, mango pineapple salsa and fried chicken wings. First we came up with the dry rubs for the chicken wings. We had this same party last year and people really liked out Old Bay chicken wings so we had to remake those this year. I put about a dozen wings in a large zip lock and poured in about a cup maybe cup and half of old bay and made sure each wing was covered. My other batch (about a dozen) I used ginger powder, garlic powder, white and pink pepper, fresh thyme and rosemary. We let both of these sit over night in the fridge. The Zucchini fries were easy, I cut them into one and half inch long by half inch sticks. I then cover them in egg and tossed them in bread crumbs and fried them for about three minutes and seasoned them with sea salt. Next Noel made the sweet potato chips. She made these because she wanted to make zucchini chips but I had already cut them into fries. First careful with the mandolin she sliced the potato into real thin slices then she put them in the fryer for until they were browned on both sides. The only problem is she put them all in together so they didn't cook evenly, took a long time to make and eventually burned. They were good until the cooled down then they just tasted burned, next time we'll try a handful at a time. As for the chicken wings about a hour before I made them I stuck them in the freezer. I then cooked four at a time for eight minutes at the top temperature that my fryer goes to. The salsa I made early in the morning. I cut up two mangoes, a regular mango and a champagne mango, a whole pineapple, half a habanero pepper (careful these are HOT!!!), two cloves garlic, a shallot, two tablespoons fresh minced ginger, the juice from a lime and cilantro. I made early in the day so all the flavors would have time to mingle together, I should have made the day before but I forgot to buy a lime and cilantro. The wings came out awesome, unfortunaly for Erin our friend I didn't think about dipping sauce. I remember I had bought a sauce from Russo's a week before, a roasted peach whiskey sauce from Stonewall Kitchen, they make amazing sauces that I have used in the past. Next time I'll make my own dipping sauce so my friends will have more choices for their wings.

Since yesterday was Independence Day I wanted to drink only American beverages. So instead of wine, yes I know there is wine made in the states, I drank Bourbon. I love Bourbon, its my favorite type of whiskey. I had a bottle of Wathen's open. Wathen's is a wonderful single barrel bourbon that is aged about seven years, the distiller goes around a few months before seven years and samples each barrel, when he thinks the barrel is ready it's ready. He also hand signs each bottle with his name, the barrel number and the bottle number. This is the eighth generation of distillers and they just keep getting it right. At 94 proof its not the strongest of bourbons but it's up there, it has a smooth oak, caramel and some dark fruit flavors. It goes fantastic with a nice cigar. So what makes bourbon? Some people claim it has to be from bourbon county, which is false. Bourbon must be at least 51% corn ( that is why it is the sweetest of the whiskeys), it also must be aged at least two years in new white oak barrels that have been charred, also nothing can be added to the bourbon when bottling to enhance flavor, sweetness, or alter color. I like my bourbon with a few rocks ( that is bar lingo for ice) but it's also great neat ( bar lingo for no ice or water). I told one of my accounts about a year ago that I was going to go home put a few rocks in a glass and have some of the Wathen's. He looked at me straight faced and asked if I was going to wear a dress while drinking the bourbon. Some people think it's wimpy to put ice/water in whiskey, I say drink it the way you like it!! Just don't tell him I put ice in mine please.