Grilled Chicken Cacciatore

I met my friend george for a few beers tonight and he had a few very nice Quail for me. While driving home I decided that I'd make Cacciatore with the quail. This is my recipe, it's wonderful even if you don't have a friend like George to add quail.

Grilled Chicken Cacciatore

Chicken Cacciatore roughly translates to 'Hunter's style chicken.' Originally this dish was called 'Caccatoria' which meant 'Hunter's wife's chicken,' in reference to the traditional hearty dish served the night before the hunt.

Grated fresh Romano cheese

1 Whole fresh chicken, cut up

Sauce

1/4 C Extra virgin olive oil

2 Medium white onions, peeled and chopped

6 CLOVES Garlic, peeled and minced

1 C Cabernet Sauvignon wine

3 C Plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and diced

3 C Beef broth

1 8-OZ CAN Tomato sauce

1/4 LB Italian brown mushrooms, rinsed and sliced

1/4 C Green olives, medium, pitted

Juice of 1/2 lemon

3 TBL Sweet butter

1/4 C Fresh Italian parsley, minced fine

1 Bay leaf

1 TSP Rosemary leaf, minced

Salt and pepper to taste

Garnish

1 TBL Fresh Italian parsley

1. Grill chicken over medium-high heat until outside is well-browned, but do not fully cook. In a large sautÈ pan, over medium high heat, heat oil.

2. Cook onions until soft; add garlic and cook a minute or two more, to release flavor into the oil. Add chicken and stir. Add wine and simmer until liquid reduces to almost nothing (Be careful not to burn).

3. Add tomatoes, 2C beef broth, tomato sauce, lemon juice, butter, herbs, salt and pepper. Simmer for at least 45 minutes, then add mushrooms, and olives. Simmer for 10 minutes more. As sauce reduces, replace liquid with beef broth a little at a time. Garnish with parsley and Romano cheese.

4. Serve with boiled potatoes or orzo.

Another great way to drink Tequila

I made this wonderful drink for my TV show about 12years ago and used it in my first book “The Sonoran Grill” We make these for dinner parties and they are always a big hit, but there seems to be an issue… they affect your wrist. I notice that every time they get close to my mouth my wrist seems to turn further than I wanted and the whole drink magically disappears down my throat. So just to make sure I try another and viola gone again. In short these are way too easy to drink.

Stevie Ray

I made this excellent drink in honor of the great American Blues legend Stevie Ray Vaughn. They are both hard and smooth at the same time!

2 OZ Silver Tequila

1/2 OZ Blue Curacao

1/2 OZ Mandarin Napoleon or Grand Mariner

Juice of 1 Key lime

Give your car keys to someone else. Shake all ingredients with ice, strain and serve in a martini glass. Repeat as needed!

Extreme Grill Lighting and Cleaning MCTV

Extreme Grill Cleaning and Lighting

Okay, you’re having a party in the backyard. You’ve marinated your famous Pollo Asado overnight and you’ve lit the grill. Everyone’s there and hungry. You go outside to toss the chicken on the grill and it happens… The grill’s not getting hot. The charcoal is lit but not really going… this happens to everyone. A clean charcoal grill is a grill that will perform well. In today’s video we see how to clean and light the grill… with blow torch!

Check your homeowners insurance before trying this as people have burnt their houses down!

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 Ketchup

http://www.seriouseats.com/ is a website I subscribe to. It’s a great food site, high-energy… lots of good ideas and comments. This morning they had a Ketchup recipe. If you’ve never had homemade ketchup it’s well worth the effort. These were my comments, and below is the recipe, if you try it make sure to use my changes. I know the Italian Tomatoes are about $6 a can, trust me this is the best extra $5 you can spend in your kitchen!

When speaking of Ketchup we are thinking Tomato Ketchup, mushroom and even banana varieties have been popular. There are several different stories about the derivation of the word ketchup, every thing from, fish sauce to type of soy sauce to a sauce of pickled vegetables.

Ketchup like Salsa can be made from many other ingredients, and for my money homemade ketchup again like salsa is far superior to its canned or bottled relative. Once again convenience provides a very stable middle of the road flavor that appeals to the masses but the wow factor is completely lost. The only thing I would change in this recipe is the addition of San Marzano tomatoes from Italy or in season fresh from your garden! Oh… and I might try substituting Chipotle (a peat smoked jalapeno) for the cayenne, but that’s just my Sonoran twist!

Mad Coyote Joe

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 medium onion, chopped medium

• 1 clove garlic, minced

• 1 28-oz can tomato purée (MCJ Change Use San Marzano Tomatoes from Italy)

• 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

• 1/4 cup cider vinegar

• 1 tablespoon tomato paste

• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1/2 teaspoon ground mustard

• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

• 1/8 teaspoon allspice

• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (MCJ Change Use Chipotle chile up to 1 tsp.)

PROCEDURES


Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat until shimmering. Add in the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened but not browned, 5 to 8 minutes. Add in the garlic and stir until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the tomato purée, brown sugar, vinegar, tomato paste, salt, mustard, cloves, allspice, and cayenne pepper and stir to combine. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened to the consistency of ketchup, 45 to 60 minutes. 








Place ketchup in the jar of a blender and purée until completely smooth. 








Wash and dry saucepan then place a fine mesh strainer over top. Pour ketchup in the strainer and, using a spatula, force through all of the ketchup. 








Taste ketchup and adjust seasonings if necessary. Pour ketchup into a jar, seal, and store in the refrigerator for 3 weeks up to a month. 



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!