Kenny's Recipes and techniques

[Hida Kenshiro]

Hi, as many of you know I recently graduated from culinary school. I've been a huge foodie for a while now too... i wanted to use this thread to explain cooking techniques and give out recipes because well everyone ought to know how to cook. Seriously, guys and ladies and ladyboys, it's pretty sexy to cook for your significant other. If you don't eat meat you might want to leave now before I give you dirty looks from across the internets.

First up on my list: Risotto

Risotto is the best way in my opinion to prepare rice. you can use any rice for this but the traditional and in my opinion best rice to use is Arborio. Arborio is a short grain rice. it has the ability to absorb at least 3x it's volume in liquid. In other words, if you use 1 cup of arborio rice (btw... measuring dry ingredients by volume is very silly but we'll let it go for this) it can absorb 3 cups of liquid.

risotto the technique is very simple but it will take between 30-45 minutes to do it right (until you get good at it. at which point you might be able to pinch off 25 minutes)

The technique.

ingredients:

butter UNSALTED (you figure out the amount. unsalted is very important controlling the salt content of your food will help it taste good. )
onion (for a single cup of arborio i would use half of a big white or vidalia onion, never use red. after it's all said and done no one will ever notice the onion)
sharp sharp cook's knife
1 deep sauce pan
1 slight more shallow sauce pan
1 cup of arborio rice
some chopped or whole wild mushrooms
some chopped asparagus (funny smelling pee is awesome)
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup white wine (you figure out what you want to cook with)
optional parmesan cheese or mascarpone

in the slightly more shallow sauce pan pour the wine and stock in and bring it to a boil then turn down to a simmer.

take your onion cut it in half so the knobbly ends are still intact. Turn the knobbly end down. Vertically and horizontally make careful small cuts with a knife ever centimeter or so. don't go all the way through the onion you want the structural integrity to no be terribly compromised. Now, turn that onion sideways and hold the knobbly end. Take your knife and slice or chop (slicing is a sawing motion the moves forward then backwards chopping is straight down) vertically ever centimeter or so... be proud of yourself you just learned how to mince, use your powers wisely.

in your deep sauce pan over medium heat melt your butter. Throw in onions and a dash of salt. you must now sweat the onions. sweating onions is not frying. they should never turn brown (aka caramelize) they just need to get all translucent.

next, throw in the cup of rice. DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM YOUR PAN FROM NOW UNTIL IT IS DONE (or until you get really comfortable with this) turn the heat down to low and slowly stir the rice around to toast the rice. you will see the sides of the arborio become translucent when the majority of the rice looks like this. start pouring in the first of 3 portions of the stockwine. constantly stir (you will unlock an achievement making risotto called "Big beefy stirring arm") until the majority of the liquids have been absorbed add 2nd of 3 portions of liquids. Stir constantly... again (see! achievement almost unlocked) when most of the liquid has been absorbed add in the last of the liquid and asparagus and the shrooms. let the rice absorb the rest. season (this means add pepper and salt til it tastes the way you want it to) plate and serve. (unlock big beefy stirring arm achievement)

Right about now you're probably thinking to yourself..."Kenny why is my rice dish all creamy? i didn't use any cream in this... "

Starch... that's right the starch from the rice has created the creamy awesomeness that is now in your very appreciative gob. you remember that optional cheese i mentioned in the ingredients... you could have thrown it in right at the end.

that's risotto. now you can play around with that. For thanksgiving this year, i made cranberry risotto. i used 2 cups of cranberry juice and 1 cup of stock and i threw in dried cranberries at the end. i have also made rice pudding using coconut milk and confectioner's sugar (cornstarch rules) you are really only limited by your mind.

next time chocolate truffles

[Dirty Yasuki]

This is internet gold. I want more Kenny

[Hida Kenshiro]

Chocolate truffles
So chocolate truffles are awesome and fairly easy to pull off. Even if you screw up tempering your chocolate you can throw it in a frig and it ought to be fine and set up nicely

First you need to make a Ganache... that's a fancy word for heavy cream and chocolate. Note flavoring can happen and should. vanilla is the most basic but give everything a try because you never know what's gonna taste amazing or what will taste awful. If you don't have an extract to use you can still flavor... example mint and orange rine get thrown in with the cream and brought to a boil. take it off the heat and cover it with plastic wrap and set aside for a half hour or so. Then strain out anything left over and bring the cream back to a boil.
Chocolate Ganache
7oz heavy cream
½ tsp vanilla
1lbs chocolate chopped
2oz butter (this makes it melt in your mouth more and cover the tongue)

Bring cream to boil, whisk in vanilla then chocolate then butter. put in a pan and cover with plastic wrap make sure you push the plastic wrap down on top of the ganache. no one likes a film. now that you've cooked you gotta chill. first you cook then you chill. Throw it in the frig for a while.

After like an hour or whatever get a melon baller or some small spherical scooping devices make some ganache balls. use your hands to perfect the spheres like if you're making cookies. Set them bitches aside for a moment.

If you want toppings you should set them up long before you start ballin' by toppings i mean walnuts, almonds, cocoa powder, or coconut or anything you can think of.

Now for the "hard" part. Tempering chocolate. This is delicate work and can be screwed up easily but like i said early if you throw them in the frig things should be just fine anyway.

Tempered chocolate is chocolate that is stable at room temperature. you know how chocolate bars are? yeah those are tempered chocolate. Tempering chocolate is totally useful for several other things so use this to pull off other amazing feats of chocolate.

There are 3 methods for tempering chocolate i know all of them however i will teach you the easiest. This is called the Incomplete Melting method

Things you will need:
A double boiler (To quote tyler florance: " this is a fancy term for a bowl and a pot of boiling water.)
1lb of chocolate
A trusty easy to read thermometer

Chop the chocoalte into smaller bits I find it's more like "shaving" than "choping" try to make the bits as uniform as possible.

In the double boiler melt about 80% of the chocolate you must never allow the heat of the chocolate to go above 97Degrees F.YOU MUST WATCH THE TEMPERATURE CLOSELY. Remove from heat now stir in the rest of the unmelted chocolate. BAM YOU JUST TEMPERED CHOCOLATE (hopefully)

Now quickly take your balls and dip them in the tempered chocolate wipe off excess. roll in toppings set on a pan to set up. If your chocolate was properly tempered your balls will harden. if not they'll stay gooey so you can throw them in the frig to correct the error.

enjoy the chocolate balls

next time...pastry cream and pate a choux (eclairs)

[Kaiu Genji]

We still talking about unsalted butter, Kenny?

Both recipes look awesome

[Hiruma Chico]

Now quickly take your balls and dip them in the tempered chocolate wipe off excess. roll in toppings set on a pan to set up. If your chocolate was properly tempered your balls will harden.

There's a double entendre in here somewhere, I just know it.

[Hiruma Chico]

aahhhh, here it is: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/ ... alls/2846/

[Hida Kenshiro]

We still talking about unsalted butter, Kenny?

ALWAYS UNSALTED BUTTER. salted butter is only for the table after cooking.

aahhhh, here it is: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/ ... alls/2846/

more like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR1hI_Ikuv8

[Hiruma Chico]

That was awesome, thanks Kenny! BTW, The State was amazing, not sure why it vanished after merely three seasons. Consistently one of the funniest shows on TV at the time, and way better than SNL during that same time period. I love their spoofs on the Superfriends.

[Hida Kenshiro]

Pate a Choux (Pat a shoe)
ingredients
16 fl oz water
4 oz (by weight) Butter
3/4 t salt
8 oz all purpose flour
12 oz eggs (every egg is around 2 oz (this includes the shell or you could get liquid eggs but i suggest shell eggs. sans shell it's about 1.67 oz son of a bitch you gotta do maths)

Procedure:
Combine water, butter, and salt in a heavy sauce pan and bring to a boil.
Remove pan from heat and add all the flour at once, stir quickly.
Return pan to moderate heat and stir vigorously until the dough forms a ball and pulls away from the sides of the pan.
Transfer the dough to the bowl of a mixer
With a paddle attachment (or your big beef stirring arm) mix at low speed until the dough has cooled to 140 degrees
On medium slow speed add the eggs a little at a time. add no more than a fourth of the egg at once, and wait until they completely absorbed before adding the remainder. when all the eggs are absorbed the paste is ready to use. Throw it in a pastry bag and pipe on to a lined sheet pan they will expand in all directions so give them some room.
Bake at high temps 425 for the first 12 minutes then turn down 375 to finish. The reason for this is the choux will raise thanks to steam

Pastry Cream
Pastry Cream
32oz milk
4oz sugar
2oz butter
3oz egg yolk
4oz eggs
4oz sugar
2 oz cornstartch
1T vanilla ex

Procedure:
Dissolve first measure of sugar into milk and bring to boil
Combine eggs and cornstarch and second measure of sugar.
Temper the egg mixture (poor a little bit of hot milk into eggs bit by bit to avoid scrambling the eggs)
Poor it all back into the sauce pot. Stir constantly with whisk on the bottom of the pot so it doesn't burn. Bring to boil (it will look like lava).
Boil and stir for one more minute. Remove from heat.
Add in butter and vanilla mix until smooth. Additional mixing can harm the product.

let it cool down throw it in a pastry bag and cut a small slit (we all love small slits don't we) in the bottom of the now baked pate a choux. squeeze a little of your cream in the hole. be careful you don't want to destroy your choux by going in to quickly with your cream. take it slow.

Next time... not sure... i'll take requests.

[Dirty Yasuki]

I wonder what tips and tricks you have for roasting, grilling, broiling meat (Pork, beef, chicken and some seafood). You don't have to post a recipe if you don't want to but if you do post one it would be much appreciated.

There's an Italian specialty store here on my side of the globe. I might buy some arborio rice and try out making the risotto.