A Mighty Fein Marinade

Today's entry comes via Death Toll Scholl

Thanks to the power of Facebook, I was recently united with a high school classmate-turned-chef – Tim Fein. He suggested that his marinade recipe would hold up at any grilling event and could be used with any meat. I wondered if this marinate would really stand up to Man B Que standards so I decided to try it out on my new grill.

The Setup


A Fine Fein Marinade

3 c v8 juice
2 shots whiskey (2 oz.)
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp honey
¾ c oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp minced shallot
2 limes, juiced
3 tbsp of minced fresh cilantro
Salt and pepper

Cooking

Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl, then apply to whatever you deign to grill. I applied it to shrimp, but think it would be a great chicken and beef marinade as well. I also grilled the shrimp skewers with some good corn on the cob - a prospect which is only going to improve as the weather improves and we venture into Illinois sweet corn season.

1. Shell, de-vein, and remove head from shrimp. Marinade shrimp for at least 30 minutes prior to grilling. Soak skewers if using wooden skewers.

2. If you haven't already, skewer the shrimp, allowing for even spacing between individual shrimp. Do not pluralize shrimp as "shrimps," because that is a fool-ass thing to do.

3. Shuck the outer layer of the corn, remove the silk, and soak in water for a few minutes.

4. Get your coals ready in a chimney starter, like so:

5. And set up your grill for indirect grilling, like so:


6. Remove your corn from the water and shake off excess.

7. Oil your grill grate and place corn over the direct heat, allowing for a couple of minutes per side before placing skewers over indirect heat.

8. Grill the shrimp 1-2 minutes per side, until pink.

9. Remove corn and skewers from grill, enjoy your feast of food with built-in handles.

Fast Food: Basil Goat Cheese Pizza

Imagine how much better this would be if I could roll dough into a remotely recognizable geometrical shape. Magic, I tell you!

You know those nights where work sucks, the commute is a bastard, and the last thing you feel like doing is cooking? This recipe is perfect for those kind of nights, with time and effort comparable to picking up crappy takeout, and a much better result.

Using a pre-made crust might not be much of a foodie's purist approach, but Tuesday nights after an eight hour day don't always allow for that. This is still a fresh, fairly healthy meal that beats the hell out of obstructing your colon with Arby's.

Let's set out how to make a superb pizza in a half hour. But first, a tedious note about equipment!

Tedious Note



The instructions assume you have a pizza stone. I got mine as a gift, but if you don't have one, there are alternatives to dropping $40 on a stone at a fancy kitchenware store. You can use a cookie sheet, at the expense of the extra-crispy crust, or you can head down to Lowe's or Home Depot and ask for some unglazed quarry tiles. Buy a bunch of them and line the bottom of your oven with them, taking care not to block the vents. They're about 70 cents apiece. Buy extras in case a tile cracks. Go crazy. You'll get all the benefit of an expensive stone at a tenth of the price. Leaving them in the oven all the time will help temper them to heat changes and keep a more consistent temperature in your oven.

The Setup



1 pre-made pizza crust, 10 oz. (12")
2 tsp cornmeal
3 med garlic cloves, quartered
1 c arugula
1 c fresh basil leaves
1/2 tsp olive oil
1 tbsp grated fresh Parmesan
Salt and black pepper
4 oz goat cheese



You're also going to want a food processor and a pizza peel (the wooden pizza board you seen in every movie ever with a pizza parlor in it) along with the aforementioned stone/tiles. You're also definitely going to want fresh Parmesan, as opposed to the sawdust in the green can that you shake over pasta.

Cooking

1. Preheat oven to 500, allowing stone to heat up along with the oven.



2. Put the garlic, arugula, parmesan, basil, and olive oil in the food processor along with salt and pepper to taste. Pulse until a paste forms.

3. Spread cornmeal on pizza peel. Roll out dough on top.



4. Top the pizza with paste and goat cheese. Add additional toppings if you'd like, like cherry tomatoes, red pepper flakes, or some sopressata.

5. Slide pizza onto stone and bake until pizza is crisp and puffed, 6-9 minutes (see top picture, or ... you know, use common sense).

Home Sausagery: The Maxwell Street Polish

The Maxwell Street Polish sausage is a true Chicago classic, a sort of hybridization of the classic hot dog and the kielbasa. It's the closest thing to street food we have in this overly-regulated town, minus a couple elotes stands in the neighborhoods.

According to various stories I've heard slurred from bar stools over the years, the Polish wasn't invented by a Polish guy at all, but a Macedonian immigrant named Jimmy. Now it's got a place in the Chicago food pantheon along with Italian beef, Chicago-style dogs, and deep dish.



Since UIC's push outward has relocated most of the original Polish purveyors, it's as good a time as any to start a Polish sausage tradition of your own. This comes straight from Death Toll Scholl, who may not be Macedonian, but definitely isn't Polish either.

Man B Que Maxwell Street Polish



3 lbs pork shoulder – cubed
1 lb bacon – cut into 1" pieces
1 tsp salt
2 tsp pepper
2 med onion – 1 finely chopped; 1 cubed
1 tsp ground mustard
1 bottle yellow mustard



1. Place all utensils and sausage making tools in freezer for at least 1 hour prior to beginning the grinding process. You don't want any of the fat getting warm and mushy - that will screw with your sausage-making in a powerful fashion. So everything must be as cold as possible. Some people just keep their meat grinders in the freezer at all times - if you've got the space, it might be a good idea to do so.



2. Cube pork and cut bacon and arrange on a cookie sheet; put in
freezer for at least 30 minutes.

3. While meat chills, mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and prepare onions.

4. Take cookie sheet out of freezer and add the cubed onion to the meat.



5. Grind meat/onion mixture into a cold bowl set on ice.



6. Using a Kitchenaid or other type of mixer, mix chopped onion, dry ingredients and mustard

7. Prepare sausage casing. There are various types of both organic (hog, lamb) and synthetic casings to use.



8. Stuff casing, as pictured.



9. Hang casing for 1 hour. Heat the grill while practicing your Macedonian-American accent (whatever that is).

Great English Food: Shepherd's Pie

Picture snagged from here. PROPER!

English food has long been misunderstood in this country. Even classified as repulsive by those who may not appreciate the combination of beans and toast for breakfast. But some of us know better. A lot of that undeserved reputation seems to be a problem in translation. People from the UK have a history of taking perfectly delicious foods and giving them horrifically unappealing names.

- “A nice hearty sausage? Oy, let’s call that blood pudding”

- “Delicious back bacon? What’s a good name for that, mum? Roight, they’s called rashers, they is.”

- “Fruit dessert? That’s called trifle. Shut up, that's why.”

What you see is the foundation of American mistrust of British cooking. Had these people invented hamburgers, they probably would have named it Goatse (note: don’t Google that term if you don’t know it. Give thanks for your ignorance).

Smashy smashy!

Likewise, today’s meal suffers from a name that rubs Americans the wrong way. Shepherd’s pie is an excellent dish, especially in the fall/winter months. But when we hear the word pie, we expect it to be either topped with ice cream or torn out of a Hostess wrapper. Minced lamb (or venison, or beef, or unicorn), carrots, and mashed potatoes is quite the shock when one’s mind is conditioned to expect apples, sugar, and pastry. I’m not taking a side on who is “right” in this issue. I’m telling you to man up if you’ve never tried this before. It’s worth it.

The concept is simple, but you can take it a number of ways (see anal-retentive note below). You take minced or ground meat, brown it, and sweat some aromatic vegetables and herbs. You then combine these with some wine, broth, and maybe a little tomato paste. When the mix is nice and reduced, put it into a dish, top with mashed potatoes, and bake until the potatoes are nice and brown. Sing “God Save the Queen” (original or Sex Pistols version) and eat.

Yep, that's right. We used it a second time. That's how we roll.

(Note: Far as my ignorant Yank self understands, this dish is only deemed Shepherd’s Pie if you make it with lamb. Should you elect for venison [my favorite] or beef, it apparently becomes a Cottage Pie. It’s like magic.)

Shepherd's Pie

The Setup

That beer? That's for you, champ.

Pie filling
- 2 lb minced lamb or venison
- 1 white onion, small dice or minced
- 1 carrot, small dice or minced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 2 tbsp Worcestershire
- 3 sprigs fresh rosemary (This is important. Don't go dried if you can help it.)
- 1 c red wine
- 1 14 oz. can beef stock or broth
- 1 tsp allspice
- 1 tsp paprika
- Flour for dusting
- Salt and pepper
- Olive oil
Mashed potatoes
- 2-4 med/large russet potatoes (2 lb total)
- 1/2 stick (2 oz) unsalted butter
- 4-5 oz. whole milk

Cut it small. And on a Space Invaders cutting board. Both are key.

Cooking

1. If using cubed or minced meat, rather than ground, dust with flour. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Heat 1-2 tbsp oil in a 12-in skillet over med-hi. Brown meat in batches, adding oil during the process if necessary.

3. Add onion, carrot, and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes, until the onions and carrots begin to soften.

4. Add Worcestershire, tomato paste, and rosemary. Cook for another minute.

5. Pour in red wine. Bring to a boil and reduce until wine is almost evaporated.

6. Pour in enough stock/broth to cover ingredients. Check seasoning and simmer for another 20 minutes.

7. Add paprika and allspice. Preheat oven to 450.

8. Boil or simmer potatoes until tender. After potatoes cool, pass through ricer and whisk with butter and milk.

9. Spread meat mixture evenly around the bottom of a medium casserole or souffle dish. Top evenly with mashed potatoes, and use a fork to rough up the top of the potatoes. Kind of like this:



10. Bake at 450 for 25-30 min, until the top of the potatoes are browned to your liking.

Que For the Choir: The Belated Menu

February 25th's Que For the Choir - and I may be biased here - was an excellent first public event for Man B Que. We (note: making no show of editorial independence or impartiality) ended up serving food to well over 100 ladies and gents of both vegetarian and meat-loving dispositions. And considering the fact that our shirts pointedly demonstrate the most delicious parts of the cow, the vegetarians were both extremely nice and incredibly trusting of our veggie/vegan options. Live and let live, I reckon.

Anyhow, this post is intended to set correct something that's been bugging me. I intended to design and laminate a menu for the gentlefolk of the event, but week-of preparations ended up getting the best of me. People ended up having to hear descriptions of the dishes from our lovely lady severs - the horror!

So if you attended the event and wondered what it is that was so delicious, then the answer is likely located below.

Meatless Options



My Sister's Vegan Chili (The Godfather) - Chopped peppers (bell, banana, jalapeno), red onion, portobello mushrooms, chili beans, and a little bit of love. Plant love, that is. Actual interpersonal love is not vegan.

Portobello Burgers (Ricky Thumbs) - Seasoned portobellos on a bun with whatever meatless toppings your too-healthy heart desires.



Grilled Veggie Salad (Joey Grease) - Asparagus, peppers, radishes, and whatever else we could find fresh, grilled and tossed with a homemade vinaigrette by Man B Que's own lovable Italian stereotype.

The Main Event

The Gordon Mays Gouda Haze Burger (The Godfather) - A cheese and butter-filled patty seared over charcoal and dropped onto a kaiser roll, because it will give you the strength to go out and punch the Kaiser. Too bad WWI ended a couple generations ago.

Four Funerals and a Wedding (Joey Grease) - Four kinds of bacon wrapped around a scallop. You will envy the scallop.

Death Toll Habanero Wings (Death Toll Scholl) - Real chicken wings (boneless wings are for housewives at Chili's) slathered in butter, cayenne, hot sauce, and real habaneros.

Babe/Bambi Crossover Burgers (JB Mays) - Come to terms with your cinematic childhood traumas in one delicious bite. A 50/50 mix of venison and pork combined with mushrooms, apples, dijon and worcestershire. Served on a King's Hawaiian roll with chopped raw onions and aged Vermont cheddar. (All-venison edition available for those keeping Kosher. We dig.)

The Original Linus Burger (Ricky Thumbs) - The centerpiece of Man B Que's vast menu, a fresh beef patty artfully built around a foundation of cheese. Served in two varieties - Blue cheese, basil cream reduction and fresh oregano; and triple-cheddar and bacon.



Vienna Beef Chicago-style Dog - From our friends and sponsors at VB comes a grilled all-beef frank with the entire murderer's row of fixings. No, you brain-dead philistine, there is no damn ketchup!

Man B Que Hot Wings

Gluttony never looked so tender and juicy

Ah, Buffalo wings - beer makes you more delicious, and you make beer more refreshing. It's a relationship so heartwarming that Jack and Diane seem like Hitler and Eva Braun by comparison.

Prior to all the hipsters proclaiming love for tripe, kidneys, and tongue, Buffalo wings were the original culinary "one man's trash ..." story. As you all probably know, the wings were invented at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY, as a way to get some use from a part of the chicken that was then thought of as garbage. A little hot sauce and blue cheese later, they've become so popular as to substantially screw with the price of chicken itself.

If you're going to do this, do it right. Get the jointed wings and chop those bad boys down to that familiar, recognizable shape for delicious preparation. Boneless wings are for chattering sorority girls and Guy Fieri ... I repeat myself. You want that satisfying pile of bones and gristle, paying tribute to your power as a barbaric man (or, if you prefer, Amazonian lady). If you work in retail or a cubicle, it's probably as bad-ass as you're going to feel the entire week.

It should be said right off the bat that we're calling these "Hot Wings" and not "Buffalo Wings." They are not prepared in the traditional Buffalo style (i.e., not fried to hell, more than 2 ingredients in the sauce), and people from that region get mighty uppity if you deviate. This might not be Buffalo, but you can enjoy a crispy skin with a much more tender and juicy inner wing. Who ever said Buffalo was perfect, anyway? Certainly not anyone who watched Super Bowls XXV-XXVIII.

The Setup

Don't forget, you also need a big plastic cup, featuring your alma mater, filled with half cheap whiskey and half Coke.

You'll need the following equipment:

- Good tongs (not the tiny ones that your mom bought you when you moved into your own place that make your hands cramp and look like Stephen Hawking's).

- Nonstick saute pan

- Large mixing bowl (for tossing wings in sauce)

- Rimmed baking pan lined with foil

Ingredients

1 dozen chicken wings (not wing pieces, actual chicken wings)
Four for dusting, seasoned with salt and pepper
3 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp butter

8 tbsp hot sauce (in Buffalo, they use Frank's Red Hot. Just saying.)
8 tbsp butter (that'd be one stick. What, you expected health food?)
1 1/2 tbsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp garlic salt
1/2 tsp Worcestershire
1/4 tsp salt

Cooking

1. Cut through the wings at each joint. Set wing tips aside for stock, or throw away. Or do whatever you want. They're yours. Just don't try to make them into hot wings. That'd be gross.

2. Place all sauce ingredients (that second grouping of things above) in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil briefly, then simmer over low, stirring to prevent sticking.

If you want the traditional sauce recipe, than ignore everything but the butter and hot sauce.

3. Dust chicken wings in seasoned flour. Shake off excess. Preheat oven to 375.

4. Heat 2 tbsp each of the butter and oil over med/med-hi, depending on your oven range. Using both butter and oil will keep the butter from burning in the pan.

Cast iron works too. But if you put that in the dishwasher when you're done, I'll come over and punch you in the throat.

5. Brown wings in skillet for 3-4 min, until nice and golden. Flip then and repeat. Remove to baking pan.

If you want, you can brush your wings with sauce at any time during the following steps. It's going to lead to much less crispy skin, but they'll be both juicy and saucier than a 1920s burlesque performer. Your call.


6. Bake in the oven at 375 for 30-35 min, depending on the size of the wings.

The chicken juice and sauce leaking off of the sides of the pan, on to my oven floor, explains why I recommend a rimmed baking ban. Do as I say, not as I capture on film.

7. Turn oven up to 400, and bake for an additional 10 minutes.

8. Pour finished wing sauce into bowl. Remove pan from oven. Throw the wings into the sauce a half-dozen at a time, and toss in the bowl.

9. Crack open a cold beer, mutter "hell yes" to no one in particular, and throw on the DVD of Roadhouse. Enjoy yourself.

With an entire bowl of extra sauce - dip the celery in it, brush your teeth with it, or just drink it alone in the dark while staving off tears. Hooray for dignity!

Sasuagefest

Sausage Queen, 1958. Angioplasty Queen, 1965.

Oh, the horror of the sausagefest. It's a constant fear of the party and bar goer. This sausage fest is a little different. Ground meat spiced with flavors that are out of this world. Yes I am referring to packaged meat. What could be better than a good old fashioned fresh sausage, hot dog, bologna, summer, or any other variety of encased meat known to man? Well, a little alone time with your woman, I suppose.

But as far as what goes on the table, I think it’s a very short list. What other single food item can cross all meal boundaries? It's breakfast, it's lunch, it's a snack wherever, or an elegant dinner (possibly on a bun). Everyone's familiar with breakfast sausage as a staple, but what other types of sausage are out there? Cajun is one category. These sausages are a mix and adaptation of many European cultures; boudin and andouille are two of the most widely-known. Another option would be German sausage - bratwurst or frankfurters, among others. Other European nations also have great sausage; Poland has Kielbasa, and Spain has chorizo.

Then we've got Italian sausage. Sausage was originally a method of preparing tougher or much less desirable cuts of meat and packaging them with enough spices and seasoning to choke a goat. Nowadays, the quality of meat is much better, but you still never know. Buying sausage is in my mind one of those things that can be dicey, you never know what some folks may think is acceptable for use in sausage. Therefore I suggest making your own. Grinding your own meat can be a time consuming and EXTREMELY messy, the first time I did it without supervision I managed to splatter pork blood on the ceiling and walls of my mother’s kitchen - BIG, BIG mistake (though even she thought it was exceptional sausage when it was all cleaned up).

I grew up watching the great men in my life make everything they ate. No matter what it was, growing a garden, hunting or fishing for meat, they made some of the best food ever. Sausage was a tradition. We made it all breakfast sausage mostly but we dabbled in other varieties. This is one of our favorites.

Italian Cheese & Red Wine Sausage

4 lbs. boneless pork butt or shoulder
2 tbsp coarse-ground fennel seed
2 bay leaves, crushed
1/4 c chopped parsley
5 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp dried red pepper flakes
2 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 c grated Romano or Parmesan cheese
3/4 c dry red wine
4 yards sausage casing

Grind the meat using the coarse blade. Mix all ingredients together and allow the mixture to sit for 1 hour before stuffing into casings.