Heirloom Vegetable: Long of Naples Squash

WOW! Look at the size of this incredible squash. It weighs about 25 pounds.

It is an Italian heirloom variety known as the Long of Naples.

It was grown by Green Acres Farm of North Judson, Indiana.

The squash was purchased by the family that I work for at the Chicago City Green Market.

Now it is in my care and shall become the focus of my menus for the week (or month, this thing is HUGE!). I have been trying to learn more about this type of squash on the Net, but there isn't much info. If anyone has any info or lore about this varietal please share it with me. I am in awe of this beauty. I will share my squash recipes with all of you in the coming weeks!

BTKW Culinary Heritage Recipes

You may have noticed the new "BTKW Culinary Heritage Recipes" label attached to some posts. This is a new category of recipes that Beyond the Kitchen Wall will be compiling as an ongoing effort to preserve Culinary Traditions from around the World. The recipes with this label are the very essence of a Culture or a Cuisine. They are the basics, the treasures of our Culinary Heritage that should be preserved for all times. The loss of any one of these recipes would be a loss for all of Humanity. Please feel free to submit any recipes that you feel should be added to this archive, and explain why you feel that they define a people. Your help will be greatly appreciated! It's a big world out there, and we don't want to lose anything. Submit recipes to my E-mail which you can access through my profile. If you are a Facebook user, you can also find me there.

Wishing you all my best, and good eating,

Chef Dennis Wasko

Mango and Habanero Chutney

This year we planted Habanero Chiles in the kitchen garden. The plants did very well and gave us an abundance of fiery fruit. There is something magical about the flavor of Habaneros, not only do they pack a massive punch, but they also have an alluring fruity perfume that other chiles just don't have. That fruitiness really comes through when they are paired with other fruits.

This week I found myself with a large batch of chiles. I needed to use them before their freshness began to fade, so I developed the following recipe using frozen mango chunks that I had in the freezer. The resulting chutney was packed with flavor and attitude. Beware though, this recipe is not for the faint of heart or gentle of stomach. It's hot, damn hot, Vindaloo hot, but delicious. Try it with chicken or pork. It works well with Indian or Caribbean dishes.

Mango and Habanero Chutney
Makes 2 Quarts

1 tablespoon virgin coconut oil
1 medium onion, chopped
8 cups fresh or frozen mango chunks
8 habanero chiles, chopped, seeds and all!
1 clove garlic, minced
2 slices fresh ginger
2 tablespoons lemon grass, chopped
1/2 cup red bell, finely diced
2 cups sugar
1 to 1 1/2 cups rice wine vinegar
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
salt to taste

Melt coconut oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and gently saute until onion becomes transluscent, do not brown. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Lower heat and gently simmer for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until chutney is thick. Gently stir from time to time, but be careful not to break up the mango too much. Check for seasoning. If chutney is not tart enough for your taste, add more vinegar. If it's too tart, add more sugar. The amounts really depend on the sweetness of the mango. Pack into clean quart jars and store in the refrigerator. It should keep for 2 months and "improve" with age.

BTKW Tip: IQF Berries

We had a very bountiful berry harvest in the Mid-West this year. The rainfall and fairly mild temperatures made for perfect growing conditions for all of our seasonal favorites. So what do you do with the multitude of fragile berries that you did not bake into pies, turn into jams, or just eat straight from the flat? It seems a shame to let the end of the season "leftovers" just sit and get moldy while you pay attention the new multitude of Fall fruits.

One way of preserving your berries for later use is to freeze them. The term IQF stands for Individually Quick Frozen. It's a great way to preserve berries for future recipes. It is also incredibly simple.

Line a half sheet pan with parchment paper, spread cleaned berries on sheet (be sure that they are not touching), cover with plastic, place in freezer overnight. The next day, you have IQF berries! They may now be put into storage bags for future use. Now you can enjoy farm fresh, local berries all year long.

Foodbuzz Publisher Community Launches

LAUNCH OF GLOBAL FOODBUZZ BLOGGER COMMUNITY
LEVERAGES REAL-PEOPLE, REAL-TIME POWER OF FOOD PUBLISHING

San Francisco – October 13, 2008: Foodbuzz, Inc., officially inaugurates its food blogger community with more than 1,000 blog partners, a global food blogging event and an online platform that captures the real-people, real-time power of food publishing in every corner of the world. At launch, the Foodbuzz community ranks as one of the top-10 Internet destinations for food and dining (Quantcast), with bloggers based in 45 countries and 863 cities serving up daily food content.
“Food bloggers are at the forefront of reality publishing and the dramatic growth of new media has redefined how food enthusiasts access tasty content,” said Doug Collister, Executive Vice President of Foodbuzz, Inc. “Food bloggers are the new breed of local food experts and at any minute of the day, Foodbuzz is there to help capture the immediacy of their hands-on experiences, be it a memorable restaurant meal, a trip to the farmers market, or a special home-cooked meal.”
Foodbuzz is the only online community with content created exclusively by food bloggers and rated by foodies. The site offers more than 20,000 pieces of new food and dining content weekly, including recipes, photos, blog posts, videos and restaurant reviews. Members decide the “tastiness” of each piece of content by voting and “buzz” the most popular posts to the top of the daily menu of submissions. Foodbuzz currently logs over 13 million monthly page views and over three million monthly unique visitors.
“Our goal is to be the number-one online source of quality food and dining content by promoting the talent, enthusiasm and knowledge of food bloggers around the globe,” said Ben Dehan, founder and CEO of Foodbuzz, Inc.

The Foodbuzz blogger community is growing at a rate of 40 percent per month driven by strong growth in existing partner blogs and the addition of over 100 new blogs per month. “The Foodbuzz.com Web site is like the stock of a great soup. The Web site provides the base or backbone for bloggers to interact as a community, contribute content, and have that content buzzed by their peers,” said Mr. Dehan.
Global Blogging Event
Demonstrating the talent and scope of the Foodbuzz community, 24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs offered online food enthusiasts an international, virtual street festival of food and diversity. The new feature showcased blog posts from 24 Foodbuzz partner bloggers chronicling events occurring around the globe during a 24 hour period and included:
· Mid-Autumn Festival Banquest (New York, NY)
· The "Found on Foodbuzz" 24-Item Tasting Menu (San Francisco, CA)
· Aussie BBQ Bonanza – Celebrating Diversity (Sydney, Australia)
· The Four Corners of Carolina BBQ Road Trip (Charleston, SC)
· Criminal Tastes – An Illegal Supper (Crested Butte, CO)
· From Matambre to Empanadas: An Argentine Dinner (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
· A Sweet Trompe l’oeil (Seattle, WA)

“24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs” captures the quality and unique local perspective of our food bloggers and shared it with the world,” said Ryan Stern, Director of the Foodbuzz Publisher Community. “It illustrates exactly what the future of food publishing is all about – real food, experienced by real people, shared real-time.”
About Foodbuzz, Inc.
Based in San Francisco, Foodbuzz, Inc., launched its beta Web site, foodbuzz.com, in 2007. In less than a year, Fooduzz.com and its community of over 1,000 exclusive partner food blogs have grown into an extended online property that reaches more than three million users.

A Taste of Senegal

Part of the fun of being a Private Chef is that I am able to change my menus everyday. When you cook for the same four food critics day in and day out, it is important to keep things interesting. There are of course family favorites that I must keep in perpetual rotation, but I am also encouraged to be creative and come up with "something different". In true Beyond The Kitchen Wall style, I have been on a quest to introduce my clients to food traditions from the more obscure corners of the planet. I'm not saying that Western Africa is in any way obscure, but sadly its grand cuisine is not well known outside of certain circles. I had a lot of fun putting a Senegalese inspired menu together.

Filling a great mansion on Chicago's North Shore with the exotic scents of Western Africa made me smile. Here was food from a people and a culture that did not know such great wealth, but here was food that was fit for royalty. For a while, it was as if the whole kitchen had been moved to the center of Dakar, Senegal's Capital City. When dinner was served, the enthusiasm was palpable. For one evening, a small group of Americans discussed Senegal.
Here is the main course that I served that evening. Try it for yourself, and spend the evening discussing Africa and Her People.

Senegalese Chicken Yassa with
Cinnamon Scented Brown Basmati Rice
Serves 4 to 6

For the chicken:
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 large onions, thinly sliced
1/4 teaspoon habanero chile, minced, or more to taste
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon peanut oil
1/2 cup water
Salt and pepper to taste
1 stewing chicken, cut into 10 pieces (legs, thighs, wings, breasts cut in half)
1/2 cup pimento-stuffed olives
2 large carrots, thinly sliced
1 large red pepper, thinly sliced

In a small bowl, combine the lemon juice, habanero chile, Dijon mustard, ginger, 1/4 cup peanut oil, water, and salt and pepper. Place the chicken pieces and onions in a large sealable plastic bag, pour marinade over. Seal bag, toss together, and marinate in the refrigerator for 3 hours.

After 3 hours, remove chicken pieces from marinade. Strain onions from marinade and reserve both separately. Place heavy pot over medium heat. When hot, add 1 tablespoon peanut oil, and add chicken pieces. Do not crowd the pan. Brown the chicken on all sides, and set aside.
Add drained onions, and cook until they begin to caramelize, about 10 minutes. Stir onions often. Once onions begin to caramelize, add remaining ingredients plus the reserved marinade.
Bring to a boil and cook for about 15 minutes.

Add chicken pieces back to the pot along with any juices that may have accumulated. Cover, reduce heat to low, and gently simmer for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, depending on how tough your chicken is. After 1 hour, check seasoning, and adjust if needed.
Remove from heat and let rest while you prepare the rice.

For the rice:
2 cups brown Basmati rice
3 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon or 1 cinnamon stick
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon salt
Pepper to taste

Place a medium pot over high heat. Add oil and 1 cup of the rice. Stir constantly until rice begins to toast. Continue stirring, once rice begins to pop like popcorn, add remaining rice and all of the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, stir once more, cover, reduce heat to low, and cook for 40 minutes. Turn off heat and let rest for 5 minutes. Fluff rice with a fork.

To serve:
Place a bed of rice on a large platter. Spoon some of the sauce and vegetables from the chicken over the rice. Arrange the chicken pieces over the sauce, and top with more sauce and vegetables. May be garnished with chopped parsley and lemon zest if you wish, but this is not traditional.

To learn more about the nation of Senegal, click HERE.

The Art of Confit

The Fall is my favorite time of year to cook. It is the season when I pull out all of my favorite Classic French recipes and techniques. The smell of hearty soups and stews just makes my heart sing. This is also the time of year that I start to think about making Confit. There is something magical about this ancient process. Simple poultry or pork is turned into one of the world's culinary treasures. The process is simple, but does require some time if the final product is to achieve its full potential.

Confit is traditionally made using goose. This tough, fatty beast makes an absolutely glorious confit. Duck is also traditional, as well as pork. Today in the Southwest of France, confit is made with chicken, turkey, and just about anything that can be preserved.

So what exactly is confit? The Larousse Gastronomique defines it as "a piece of pork, goose, duck, or turkey cooked in its own fat and stored in a pot, covered in the same fat to preserve it."
It is one of the oldest forms of food preservation that was developed in Southwest France to keep meat for the long, lean months after the fall harvest/slaughter.

Today, with modern refrigeration, one would think that making confit would be obsolete. That would be true except for one very important fact; confit is incredible. It is hard to describe this transformation. Let's just say that fatty, tough meat is transformed into a rich, concentrated, succulent taste sensation. The confit process gently removes water from the meat, thereby concentrating its flavors. The process also tenderizes the meat to an almost melting consistency. There is nothing else like it!

Traditionally, only the leg, thigh, and wings of poultry are used for confit as these are the tougher cuts. The breast does not take as well to confit as it tends to dry out. With pork, the tougher cuts are also used, shoulder, ribs, etc...

The method for making confit is quite simple. If you have not made your own confit, you should try it at least once to experience the magic of this process. Of course today you can buy confit in cryovac packages, but it is not the same.

Here is a simple method for making your own confit of duck. Don't be scared, just try it.

3 5 pound ducks

1/4 cup kosher or pickling salt

1 bunch fresh thyme

3 bay leaves

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

The first thing to do is to butcher the ducks. Remove the leg/thigh portion, wings, breasts, and any giblets. Trim all of the fat and skin from the carcass.

Pack up the breasts and giblets to use another day. All we are interested in is the fat, leg/thigh, and wings. Also, save the trimmed carcass to make duck stock. Nothing is wasted in French Cuisine!

Place all of the trimmed fat and skin into a large pot. Add cold water to cover and bring to a boil. We are rendering the fat and the water will help in this process. After all of the water evaporates, you will be left with pure fat. Lower the heat to medium and continue to cook until the skin pieces begin to turn brown. Let them get golden and crispy. Turn off heat, allow to cool for 20 minutes, and drain off fat. Be Careful, the fat is still quite hot. Put fat into a bowl and refrigerate. Save the duck cracklings, they are great in salads or with eggs. Nothing is wasted in French Cuisine!

While the fat is rendering, place the leg/thigh pieces and wings into a nonreactive container. Sprinkle with the salt, and add the seasonings. Mix together. Refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove duck pieces and fat from the refrigerator. Place fat into a large pot being careful not to scrape in any of the liquid or sediment that may be at the bottom of the bowl. Place fat over low heat to melt.

Rinse duck pieces under running water to remove the salt and seasonings. Pat very dry with paper towels. Place duck into melted fat and increase heat until fat begins to just simmer. Maintain the fat at this gentle simmer. Cook the duck for 2 to 3 hours depending on how large the pieces are and how tough the duck.

To check if the duck is ready, poke with a thin knife or a skewer. If the knife goes in easily and the meat seems meltingly tender, the duck is ready. Be careful not to overcook or the duck will fall apart into the fat.

Transfer the duck pieces to a storage container and strain the fat over. The confit may now be used in your recipes, or enjoyed by itself . Confit begins to develop its full flavor character after about 1 month of storage.