Whole Grill-roasted Sea Bass

Whole Grill-roasted Sea Bass

This technique applies to grill-roasting any fish.

1 2-3 LB Sea Bass, scaled

1 TBL Olive oil

Kosher salt

Fresh-ground black pepper

1 SLICE Lemon

1 SLICE Orange

1 SLICE Lime

2-3 LEAVES Basil (or whatever herb you prefer)

1 TSP Ancho chile powder

2 Green onions, chopped fine

1 Lemon

1. Rinse the fish under very cold water, then dry with a paper towel.

2. Cut 4 deep slits down each side of the fish. Rub both sides of the fish well with olive oil. Season to taste with Kosher salt and black pepper.

3. Place the slices of citrus and basil in the cavity of the fish. Roast the fish on a very clean, medium-hot grill, turning only once.

4. After turning, sprinkle with chili powder and dress with green onions. To check for doneness you can look inside the slits.

5. Remove from grill; squeeze a little lemon over the fish and serve.

6. Serves 2.

Back at The Bread... Pilot Error

Meanwhile back at the bread… Pilot Error!

Take a look at this bread. It’s color is great but it’s a failure! The reason why, I made a mistake. I made this in a Ditch Oven and forgot to drop the temperature from 500°f to 450°f for 20 minutes with the lid on.

Then I baked another 25 minutes I tested the internal temperature it was 209°f, just 3 degrees short of the target temp. At 212°f the steam is released and the bread is perfect along with the maximum crust tention.Because the oven was too hot the crust developed nice and brown but too quick. Notice the cuts in the surface did not develop ears or deep tears. The flavor will be fine but this is a 9 not a 10. My advice make sure that your oven is not too hot or the crust will cook too fast. I’m baking in the wood fired oven tomorrow and I’ll post the results.

The bread is cooling and Kathy and I are going to have tomato, basil and Parma butter sandwiches as soon as it cools. Life is good!

Warmly,

Mad coyote Joe

Meanwhile back at the bread II

The continuing saga of Joe the Baker!

Okay last time I baked I used the Tartine Bread recipe for Basic Country Bread, a 90% white flour, 10% whole wheat flour with a starter/ leaven and long slow bench rest and crust development. I changed the recipe to 100% organic unbleached High Gluten white flour. I had been making 450g loaves, which I sold for $3 each. I increased the weight to 600g and increased the cost to $5 each.

The reactions were varied; overall they said that they liked the 90/10 recipe much better, it had a much more developed wheat flavor along with a good strong sour dough. They all liked the crust on both. The color was good but I’m not happy with the “ears”.

I’m going back to the 90/10 recipe and I’m going to add extra humidity to the bake with a pan of boiling water in the wood fired oven and a wet towel placed over the wooden door. I’m also going to decrease the baking temperature to lengthen the baking time for a darker crust and hopefully more developed ears. I’m settling on 525g and $4 each. I bake tomorrow and will post.

Warmly,

Mad Coyote Joe

Choosing the Right Knife MCTV

They say you can tell a professional by their tools. This is especially true in the kitchen. There are so many cheap, new, poorly made and thought out and unnecessary kitchen gadgets and tools on the market promising that “You’ll cook like a pro,” that are just plain a waste of time. This is not to say that all of them are garbage. With the advent of new materials and designs, there are many that perform as promised. So how do we sort this out?

Start with the basics and remember anything that sounds too good to be true, most likely is! Never has this applied so much as in the case of kitchen knives. A good basic 10 inch kitchen knife starts at about$100.

Recently, Arch, a friend of mine stopped by our local coffee house. Upon seeing me he went back out to his car and came back in with a new set of knives from the local warehouse store. It had eight different kitchen knives and a set of eight more steak knives… all for $99! What a deal. I asked Arch why he was getting new knives, he said all of our knives are old and dull. I asked if he would bring them to coffee sometime so I could look at them and he said, I brought them to see if you knew someone that could use them (He’s like that). He pulls out a box that is full of the finest knives available.

I asked, “How long a go did you have these sharpened?”

He said, “We’ve never had them sharpened.”

Okay… this is how knives are meant to be used. Good knives come sharp and they have a long, round tool that comes with them. The tool is called steel; its purpose is to keep a sharp knife sharp for a longer period of time. In most residential kitchens the knives should be sharpened by a pro about once a year. Just look online for “Knife Sharpener” in your area.

Oh and my friend Arch had his wonderful knives sharpened. They are great and he took the “Deal” back.

Warmly

Mad Coyote Joe

Mad Coyote TV is Alive and Well!

At 4:23 pm MS time we took one small step for mad kind and one giant leap for Mad Coyote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWllhGd8KJE

Check it out Mad Coyote TV is on Youtube! Please tell your friends!

Warmly

Mad Coyote Joe

The best Sorbet I've Ever Had!

My wife, Chef Kathy and I went shopping two days ago. It was her day off and we went to see a movie. The Kings Speech, a great movie for performers, it was definitely a girl movie… but I loved it!

Anyway after the movie we went to Whole Foods and bought a piece of fresh cod, $8.99 a pound, the Frozen cod was $6.99 a pound. This was a really well spent $2 fresh, full of flavor and delicious. While we were shopping Kathy went to get some sorbet, I was buying dark chocolate covered, roasted almonds. I interrupted Kathy while she was getting the sorbet and she thought she had purchased the Mango… but no! She only thought she had the Mango sorbet.

Upon arriving home I was putting the frozen items in the freezer while Kathy was putting the produce away in the big fridge in the Mad Coyote room. I noticed (to my horror) that we did not have our beloved Mango sorbet… no we had… are you ready for this… Basil Lime sorbet. Who on God’s green earth would fuck up sorbet by combining basil with lime? I was sure that it was some recent culinary school graduate that was dropping acid between convincing his or her uncle that owned a sorbet company, that this was a good idea.

10:45 pm the night of the erroneous sorbet purchase; Kathy in a desperate attempt to find some sweet satisfaction decides to try the Basil lime sorbet. I’m not buying it.

In order to understand the dynamic going on here, you need some history.

Kathy for the past forty years has been the one that will say, “Hey Joe, what do you think that light background flavor in the cream sauce is?” She is acting like this is a little question between a husband and wife. No my friend this is much more devious, this is her punking me, she is stomping the holy shit, out of any chance that I may ever have, to have a better palate than her… and she is always right! Kathy has the most amazing palate that I have ever encountered.

So when she tells me, that the basil lime sorbet has “A flavor that she could become addicted to!” I approach it with caution. Again my wife and childhood sweetheart is spot on.

This is one of the greatest flavor combinations, that I have encountered, hands down.

You need to try Sweet Republic, Basil lime Sorbet!

It has my mind reeling with cooking ideas! My advice... get some tonight!

Warmly,

Mad Coyote Joe

Blogging and Money

Blogging and Money

We’ve made the decision to place an ad space on our blog page. It can be found below this post. We could place several more but decided on one ad below the current post. A group called AdSense will decide, based on our content, which ads to place. We are in need of funding for our many projects and so we decided to go this way. With Mad Coyote TV we are thinking a pay if and what you can option. Other sites and even restaurants have tried this option with great success. Please share your thoughts on this issue, it helps us provide blog content more in line with your wishes. And as always the best way that you can help us is to repost us, on your favorite social network, or forward us to your friends.

Warmly

Mad Coyote Joe

Coments are King!

Comments are king if you are enjoying these posts you cane help us. My partner in this TV venture Raul Odonnel said to me the other day “Comments are king!” Raul is right if you feel anything, right, wrong or indifferent, please let us know. It guides us and tells us we are giving you something that you are reading and hopefully enjoying. Either way, let us know and we will respond!

Mad Coyote TV

Mad Coyote TV

I am in the process of launching Mad Coyote TV. This will solve several problems that we have been facing for the past decade. On a regular basis someone will stop me and ask a version of, “You’re ratings are so high, why does the station just not put you back on the air?” The equation in local television is this; to take the gamble on a local show with all of the cost. These cost have been something that the station has been willing to accept.

Here’s the part that you don’t know, and what has stopped me from having my own show; inventory… that’s what they call it. Inventory, like in any other business is what the station is really selling. Add all of their efforts and cost together and all it comes down to is a time slot, that half hour or hour time slot is called inventory. And the final equation is this; the station can hire and pay me, hire and pay a crew, take their very expensive equipment along with a vehicle and all of the insurances and fuel that go along with that vehicle, and then use that several hundred thousand dollar editing system and another employee, don’t forget the employee benefits… now we get to sales staff that has to go out and find and keep happy on a weekly basis a sponsor! Got it… now we get to the equation take all of that and put it on the air and pray that viewers will show up and that the shifting financial numbers will add up to a profit that must reach a level set by the station’s parent corporation. It’s all of that risk or earn a guaranteed few thousand dollars, to have one employee pop in a tape from an infomercial provider and sit and watch it for 23 minutes, the other seven minutes are more air time to sell. This equation is so strong that you can now see infomercials at noon on Sunday on network stations. And local programming, well it’s there but it’s formulaic and every minute is sold. I know what you are thinking, ‘who wants to watch infomercials?’ The station is aware that this equation is slowly eroding away at their loyal viewers, but like quitting smoking or losing weight, it’s a problem that they will address next quarter or next year. For this quarter, the profits are high enough to drive the stock price and that is the end game.

After a decade of fighting this battle along with my ongoing health issues, I had a good friend, who is in a position to know the television business both locally and nationally, say to me, “Joe, TV is dead!” “It’s yesterdays news!” He explained that my biggest battle, “Inventory” is nonexistent on the web. And unlike television, with their Neilson ratings, which is a random sampling of viewers then a projected idea of eyes on sets, with the internet I can see exactly how many viewers have watched my cooking segment, how long they watched, exactly when they click off, where they are watching from and even which devices they are using, ie; Windows, Macintosh, Blackberry, Iphone, Ipad. All of which helps me decide what to cook, how long and how deep to go with the information. And this gives advertisers hard numbers and demographics, which then allows us to put a dollar value on my work. And once a video is launched and capitalized it just keeps working it is a library of my work that anybody in the world can watch at any time they choose. And if I do my job, which is to have an strong opinion and state it clearly, in format that entertains, viewers will share the information with friends and viola, we’ve got an audience!

So we have started shooting segments that we will have on line in the next few weeks. We are getting equipment and people in place for a launch. So as we used to say, in that old, tired medium called TV… Stay Tuned!

P.S. If you’re wondering would I take a contract on local TV. Would I go back to that dinosaur and fight an uphill battle for a dieing medium... you bet your ass I would!

Valentines Day

Valentines Day

Today I’m writing to the guys. Valentines Day is, once again, a chance to tell that special someone how you feel. Love and friendship, or the way I like to think of it, someone to take this “walk of life” with.

In the case of my girl, I first saw her in art class when we both were thirteen years old. We liked each other right off. A few weeks later on the corner of Granite Reef road and Valley Vista Drive in north Scottsdale, at about 8.30 on a cool October evening, I was walking her home, I kissed her. This was her first kiss and I also took her on her first date. We soon broke up, but remained friends. I always thought about her and talked with her. A few years later I was sitting on the edge of a cement planter at Saguaro High School, talking with Randy Smith. She was walking across campus and I said to Randy, “That one right there… Kathy Ross,” pointing at her, “That’s the girl that I’m going to marry.

After that, I asked her to go to the prom with me, and she said yes. For the next few years we spent time together, almost daily, some romantic, some not, but hours upon hours, walking and talking.

We’ve now been married for 30 years. We have two amazing children and have built a life together. We love, laugh, support and help each other in everything, as the vows we shared, so long ago, said, “in good times and in bad” and I can’t imagine life without her.

And so guys, today, Valentines Day, as you take some time to tell that special someone how they make you feel why not try your hand in the kitchen. Good food is a wonderful way to say, “I love you.” It’s so much more than a card or a box of chocolates.

Here are a few easy recipes that are just right for a romantic evening.

My advice, put on some music that reminds her of where or when you met, get out the good dishes, buy a nice bottle of her favorite wine, and if you really want to amaze her… pick up your dirty socks!

These three dishes are simple, elegant and the right choice for an evening alone. The idea being eat a little, chat a little but by all means slow play the food. You’ll be glad you did! Caprese Salad

8 OZ Water Buffalo Milk Mozzarella, sliced thin

3 Large Plum, vine ripe or Heirloom Tomatoes, sliced thin

1/2 C Fresh basil, finely chopped, save a few leaves for garnish

Fruity olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Kosher salt Fresh ground black pepper

On a serving plate, arrange the mozzarella and tomatoes in circles, exposing at least half of the slices...a slice of tomato then a slice of mozzarella then a slice of tomato, and so on. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil and then balsamic vinegar then add the basil and place a few of the leaves for effect. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving. This can be made a few hours ahead of time.

Piquant Black Pepper and Cognac Shrimp

These delicious shrimp flare up in the pan. It’s just so “Spago!”

1 ½ TBl. Olive oil

1 white onion, sliced thin

Sea salt to taste

1 Lb. Medium shrimp, in their shells (this adds flavor to the sauce)

2 tsp. black pepper

1 tsp. Crushed red chile

5 sprigs of fresh thyme

1/3-cup cognac

6 Tbl. Sweet butter, cut into chunks

1 Tbl. fresh parsley, chopped fine

½ fresh lemon

Crusty French bread

Matches or a lighter (Use caution)

Sauté the onion in the oil over medium high heat until translucent. Season to taste with salt. Add the shrimp, black pepper, red chile and thyme. Sauté until shrimp are just cooked and have turned pink, 2 minutes per side. Add cognac (be careful it will flare up) and butter. Stir the butter in, touch a match if it has not ignited, allow to flame for a few seconds, remove from heat. Add parsley and toss well, drizzle with lemon. Serve on a big white plate. Peel and eat while mopping up the sauce with the bread! Goes great with a good crisp Pinot Grigio or her favorite dark beer!

Serves 4

Kahlua Ganache

15 minutes

Serve this desert to your sweetie with slices of fresh, ripe mango, big strawberries, and Angel food cake cut into 2-inch squares. Add a little champagne and who knows…

1/3 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate, chopped

1 teaspoon Kahlua, Grand Marnier, Mandarin Napoleon, or your favorite liqueur

Fresh fruit or Angel Food cake

In a double boiler (if you don’t have a double boiler place an oven proof mixing bowl over a pot of simmering water), heat the cream just until it simmers. Add the chocolate. Remove from heat and stir with a rubber spatula until the chocolate is fully melted. Drizzle in the liqueur and stir until mixed well. Serve with fresh fruit, cake, or anything that can use a bit of chocolate!

Makes 3/4 Cup

The Beat

The Beat

I wrote this a few years ago, it's one of my favorite works. Let me know what you think!

The Beat

A poem

By Daigneault

Unspoken words

take wings tonight

Aromas dance

and rise

Piercing tones

reveal true heart

The brush carves

wood, cuts ice

Colors mixed find

notes not seen

Gracious hands

yield truth

Spade finds

earth, desire and flesh

The supple

muse of youth

And in the sky

beneath the waves

The beat,

the grain,

the stone

Unspoken words

take flight tonight

From gods these

gifts, on loan

Life here is good!

Shipping Container Building

Shipping Container Building

One of the goals we have in building our campus is to use our different buildings as individual labs, the buildings themselves. The goal being to discover ways for the average person on the street to build their own home or what ever other buildings they may need, at the lowest possible cost, and with the greatest future savings of energy.

What we’re studying is Shipping Container (Connex Box), Straw Bale, Cast in Place earth, and super insulated frame, Construction. Along with this we are implementing photovoltaic electric and passive solar hot water.

I am currently working on the utility building that will house our art studio, mechanical workshop, storage and potting shed. Its frame is a shipping container. Known as a “High Cube” it is forty feet long, nine and a half feet tall and eight feet wide.

These come with utility grade, hard wood floors and are strong enough to stack eight high fully loaded. What that means to us is they can handle almost any load that the average builder might want to place on top of their building.

These Connex boxes are made out a product called “Corten” also known as weather resistant steel. There are several builders worldwide thinking up new and unusual ways to stack these structures. After looking at several boxes, our criteria being; straight, without major holes or dents, minimal corrosion, floors in good shape, doors with good seals and in good working order and weather tight, we bought ours for $2700 delivered. A friend moved it into place with a backhoe and I leveled it with a 6-ton jack. I cut in the window for light and placed a vent on the roof. Our future plans include adding thermal mass with poured in place, reinforced adobe, wrapping the finished box with two inches of insulation and a living roof that will serve as an herb garden and possible second story office. This is one or most requested blog subjects we receive. Please let us know what you’re building needs and plans are. And if we can lab something or help answer any questions that you may have. I just grabbed these pics of the net as examples of box construction.

Warmly,

Mad Coyote Joe

Who Are You?

Who Are You?

I was going through my Blog Stats. This tells me who is reading my blog and where they are. Below is the breakdown for the past few days. Historically most of my readers are from the good old USofA. Next it’s Germany then Canada, Australia, Russa, Iraq, Malaysia, Netherlands (I sure this is my friends Sabina and Roland), Japan then Thailand. These are rounded off but in correct order. Germany in number two was a big surprise, I would have thought England or Canada. This week I'm getting new readers from Asia and Eastern Europe.

Okay I’d like to know who you are and where you are from, so if you have the time and the desire to help. Please tell us a little about how you ended up at our site and where you are from. I write on everything from food to low cost building design, with crime stories and poetry thrown in, along with stories about our open mic. What drew you to our site? This will tell me where I’m serving you and not just practicing my writing. Just go to the bottom of this posting and click on comments.

United States 115

Canada 4

Singapore 4

United Kingdom 3

China 2

Slovenia 2

Australia 1

Spain 1

France 1

Spain 1

Historic Views by %

United States 87%

Germany 3%

Canada 2%

Australia 1%

Russia 1%

IIraq 1% Malaysia 1% Netherlands 1% Japan 1% Thailand 1%

Cooking School update

In building the cooking school there are several issues that I need to deal with. I’m building a venue that will serve as a school, an event location, as in weddings, meetings, perhaps a gallery, also we are looking at television and photo shoots maybe even exercise, tai chi, or even lectures and workshops. I’m, by nature, a packrat I love to collect things that others have discarded and then reuse them in construction or sculpture. This is a challenge as, I’m having to toss out things that may have a future use, but the business comes first.

I have divided our property into three outdoor and four indoor areas. Our home and the packaging room for our spice company, the connex box which will be used as an art studio, a garage and a storage area and the classroom and kitchen are all indoor venues and out door we have the cooking set and bakery, the main yard and a 16 car parking lot. My plan is to finish the bakery and cooking set first so that we can start outdoor cooking classes this spring. We will use the money from these classes to finish the other venues.

I’m working on the connex box, which I want to make look more like a little adobe building and less like a shipping container.

I'm using a CIP or cast in place adobe system of my own design.

I was given the dirt for my adobes and after inspecting it I became worried about the ratio of sand to soil.

Most of the information floating around the web and in the various books on adobe construction in our library agrees that adobe needs to be a minimum mix of 30 % clay and 70% sand and no more than 50/50. After doing a standard water / soil test my dirt looks like it’s about 80% sand 20% clay.

So I made two test blocks as I have two different piles of dirt. You can see the rings from the cardboard drink case I used as a form,

My system has additional reinforcement in several different areas that standard adobe is missing.

First it’s attached to the connex box, second it has a chain link fence diaphragm, third it has a two-inch hi density foam exterior that is tied to both the box and the fence. After making my test blocks I believe that it will be more than strong enough.

However as an added binder I’m going to add a shovel of gypsum to each wheelbarrow, which will be about 5%. I’ll let you know how it works out.

Baguettes and Country white bread just out of the wood fired oven!

Sucess at Last!

This is our first batch of any size, sixteen loaves, eight Baguettes and eight Country white. The Country white is coming out the same every time; light, mild sour dough, with a crunch that can be heard across the room… delicious!

The Baguettes are getting better with each bake, this time we have the flavor and crunch we are looking for, but the surface is a little irregular and the final loaf is not deep in color.

We are thinking maybe an egg-wash will produce the color we are looking for. For the next bake we are thinking maybe 16-32 loafs of each. After the oven gets hot enough, each bake takes about 30% more time, so we need to use hearth space as economically as possible.

I believe we can do about 30 Country loaves per bake and about 16-18 loaves of Baguette, per bake. Add that to about 10 – 12 bakes per fire and we’ve got a nice little bread business on our hands. The best part of this process is I feel alive about food again, like when I was 28 and had little kids and a young wife that I was grilling for. My mind is busy with the process of baking and it feels good.

Kathy is still by my side, tasting and helping and suggesting, only now she is an Executive chef with 35 years of cooking under her belt. Money is tight, business is slow, and my health is still in question, but life here is good!

While we were getting our oven heated and our bread dough ready, I put a pork shoulder with baby red potatoes and about 20 garlic cloves in an old iron Dutch oven in about two inches of chicken broth. As the fire was quite hot, I placed it just in the doorway. Right before our first bake, I took it inside and let it rest. When the baking was done we had supper, the pork was juicy and almost sweet, combined with the Country white just out of the oven with a schmear of organic sweet cream butter, a few cloves of the roasted garlic and a glass of Cabernet. It wasn’t fancy but WOW! Did it taste great!

The Columns are up on the Bakery pavilion and next week we go to beams and joists for the roof… photos to follow!

Shot of oven during the first counter pour!