My Dinner With Alton

Just as I'd gotten used to Texas being considered "out of the loop" when it came to big names in the cooking world, April came with visits from Alton Brown, Bobby Flay and a host of other high-magnitude lights of the food firmament.

Word must have gotten out about my Blowtorch Chili.

April 4, it was my rare privelege to attend a cooking class hosted by "Good Eats" guru Alton Brown, a fellow loyal readers of this column and my "Ask The Cook" scribblings will be familiar with.

Alton came on the food scene in 1999, and in the very first season of his show on FoodTV managed to revolutionize how I cooked everything from ribeyes to rice.

I was, however, a casual fan until the third season, when an innocuous little episode called "Three Chips for Sister Marsha" took my cherished old Toll House cookies for a trip through food science land, and transformed the recipe into three different cookies with but slight alterations of the ingredients.

Alton (or AB, as his fans call him) explained, using language that didn't require a chemistry degree but at the same time didn't oversimplify, the reasons why, say, using melted rather than softened butter would change the texture of the resulting product.

AB's theory on cooking instruction is expressed in terms of driving directions. Say you want to get to my house (bring pizza and beer). I'd have two options. I could give you a detailed set of directions, covering every turn along the way. Or, I could give you a map and you could figure the route for yourself. If we're using the first method, and you come across a street that's closed or any other minor disaster, you're quite likely going to end up lost. However, if you've got a map, you can find your own alternate route. Also, if the directions I give you are wrong, you won't know until you get to the end of them and you're not at my front door.

For the novice cook, this is heady stuff. The ability to look at a recipe and know there's something missing, or the ability to find a good substitute for something lacking from the pantry is the sort of knowledge most kitchen cooks never come across.

I had begun my own explorations on that path a few years before, but finding someone in the "in" crowd who was bent on demystifying cooking to a wide audience was exhilarating. For many years, certain TV chefs had treated cooking as if it consisted of a set of carefully guarded secrets, the true nature of which could not be revealed to mere mortals.

Alton grabbed the stone tablets and put them in a Word document for the world to read.

When I heard about the Houston class, and that the subject was to be the mysterious, magical egg, it took me all of four nanoseconds to whip out the Visa card and get my reservation made.

Going over everything that was covered in the class would take more space than we've got here, but how about a few Fun Facts about eggs?

Egg Freshness: You probably know that Grade AA eggs are supposed to be fresher than Grade A eggs, and that each package has an expiration date on it. However, if you look on the egg carton near the lot number, you'll find a three-digit number. That's the Julian date ... the day of the year on which the egg was laid. For instance, two weeks ago I was in the grocery store looking to buy eggs. The Grade AA eggs I picked up had a Julian date of 099, indicating they'd been laid just a few days before. The Grade A eggs had 082.

Eggshells: Did you know that eggshells are gas-permeable? That means they let air flow in and out. That's why eggs kept in a refrigerator with stinky foods will occasionally pick up "off" flavors. That's also why there's an air space inside eggs. You see, when eggs are laid, they're quite warm. As they cool, the contents contract and the shell hardens. If the shell was not gas-permeable, it would implode.

Poaching Eggs: The next time you poach eggs, bring your water/vinegar solution to a simmer, crack the eggs in, then cover the pan and turn OFF the burner. Let the residual heat in the pan cook the eggs. It should take about 6-8 minutes, depending on how well-done you like your yolks. This will eliminate the problem of the bubbles breaking your yolks and tattering the whites.

NOTE: This works best with room-temperature eggs. They have less thermal distance to travel. In fact, any time you're planning to cook eggs, pull them from the refrigerator a couple of hours before cook time. You'll see improved results in just about everything you make! Don't fret about spoilage. In most countries, you won't find eggs refrigerated even in grocery stores.

If you don't already have it on your bookshelf, get a copy of "I'm Just Here For The Food," Alton's first book, posthaste. He's got two more books, one on kitchen tools that's yet to be titled and "I'm Just Here For More Food," coming in the next year.

I'll be tossing in more bits in the coming weeks that come from the copious non-egg-related Q L A sessions that resulted in us never getting to the sabayon sauce portion of the program. Stay tuned!

Reader Recipe

I've asked y'all every week to send in your home kitchen recipes, and now I've had time to test some. Each week, I'll be bringing you a kitchen-tested recipe from one of your fellow readers.

This week's recipe comes from reader Lisa Trautwein, and its original title was "Chicken Sh*t." I tested it, made a few tweaks here and there, and with Lisa's kind permission changed the title to ...

Shroomy Chicken

1 lb. boneless chicken breasts or thighs (or mix for best taste), cut bite-size
1 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped
1 8-ounce package button mushrooms, sliced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and mashed
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 can low-fat cream of mushroom soup (Campbell's Healthy Request is a good one)
½ c. water or chicken stock
3 tsp. Tamari soy sauce
1 tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
¾ tsp. kosher salt
½ tsp. freshly ground black pepper

In large saucepan, sauté onion and garlic in oil for 2 minutes. Add mushrooms and continue too cook until mushrooms are tender and onions are translucent.

Add chicken and parsley, cook until chicken is half done, about 4 minutes.

Add soup, water or stock, soy sauce, salt and pepper. Simmer for 15-20 minutes, until chicken is done and flavors are well-married.

NOTE: The original recipe mentioned serving this over brown rice, but when I went to the cupboard all I could find was a box of Uncle Ben's Mushroom Recipe brown rice side dish. Talk about happy accidents! The flavor of the dish mixed with the flavor of the rice made an incredible dinner!

Try and find a tip like THAT in a highfalutin' "gourmet" cookbook. Hyuk!

Got a comment? Question? Recipe to share? Drop me a line anytime!