Fans of our Instagram know that Élizabeth and I like to cook meals on weekends matching the country of that weeks Formula 1 race. Over the season this has helped us some excellent new cuisines (Azerbaijan!) and try new things from familiar countries (fresh pasta for Italy). This week was one of the marquee races in our food calendar. It may be the butt of countless jokes, but I rate American food among the best.
Deciding on a meal for the United States Grand Prix means deciding on what, exactly, American food is. With all due respect to fried chicken, milkshakes, and the cheeseburger, there is one undisputed king of the American food hierarchy – barbecue.
American barbecue can be broken down in to several sub-types. Carolina style barbecue mainly uses pork, especially pork shoulder, and features thin and tangy sauces. Memphis style barbecue is focused on ribs and pulled pork mixed in any number of dishes. Kansas City style barbecue is more meat agnostic and uses ample amounts thick, sweet, tomatoey sauce. There’s plenty of other styles across the country (and, if Élizabeth lets me, I’d love to try each and every one!) but, with the race in Austin, Texas barbecue was the only option.
Texas barbecue is primarily beef based. It uses plenty of smoke with a long cooking time to make tough cuts of meat meltingly tender. For our dinner we opted for a nice big hunk of brisket. Unfortunately, we live in an apartment and can’t smoke meat for hours on end. Instead, we cooked the brisket sous vide at 155 F for 30 hours (sous vide recipes for brisket vary between 24 and 48 hours at a range of temperatures. Cooking lower for longer will give a firmer, juicier result while cooking it hotter for less time will be more tender, but a bit drier). It was finished in the oven at 275 F for two hours to develop a nice crust.
The brisket was paired with some barbecue beans, which we’ve included in the recipes below. We also made some barbecue sauce, and you can see how we did that too. There’s also a quick macaroni and cheese; the cheese sauce is a quick mix of cheddar and havarti cheeses and evaporated milk. For a vegetable we made coleslaw with a buttermilk dressing (thank you Serious Eats) and cornbread muffins (thank you Bakeclass).
This meal looks daunting, but there’s actually very little active work involved. Read on to see the recipes for the brisket, beans, and sauce. Hopefully soon we’ll revisit American barbecue. If you have any suggestion, please let us know!
Sometimes our recipes are inspired by events, sometimes they’re reasons to try new ingredients or techniques, and sometimes they just need to use up what’s in the fridge. This one is a bit different. This is a little bit of all three. We bought a pineapple because it was on sale and paired it with some other ingredients that we wanted to clear out. It absolutely worked.
Stuffing chicken breasts is the easiest way to make very simple meals look and sound very impressive. On it’s own, a chicken breast with some cheese and three pieces of asparagus is boring. But put that asparagus inside the chicken breast and suddenly it’s fancy! It only takes a minute (plus another minute of hand washing, because you’re going to be touching this chicken all over). Read on to learn more!
When I was a child I hated everything about pickles. Their icky green colour, their slimy feel, their sour bite, and above all how people used them to ruin perfectly good cheeseburgers (ketchup only, please!). Sometime between then and now my eyes and tastebuds have completely flipped and I can’t get enough of them. For me, if pickles are an option, they’re the best option. Including on cheeseburgers.
I love love love swimming. After a long day you just dive in and suddenly there is no more noise and it’s just so relaxing. Plus it’s a great workout! When Jeff and I started dating and I told him I swam he was like I LOVE SWIMMING TOO! Turns out he meant he loves splashing around in the water while I love swimming laps. A few months later, he started going to the pool by himself to swim laps. I was very impressed and he kept at it and now does swim workout of 30-45 minutes with me. We often go swimming on week night right after work/school and it’s super convenient. The only downside is we get home a bit past 7 PM starving with no food ready. When we started this routine last fall, we ate SO MUCH cheese as we cooked. While tasty, this kind of negated the swim workout we had just done.
I mentioned this a few times so far on the blog but my mom, Johanne, is a great cook! When I lived at home, I made no efforts whatsoever to learn to cook since my mom would do everything and my sister and I cleaned up afterwards. I had to learn to cook when I was ~18 and lived away from home to go to school. Believe me, it wasn’t pretty and I regretted not learning more when I lived at home. One of the most memorable of my food fail was when my sister called me and told me she was coming over to study with me and my cousin (also my roommate at the time) for the afternoon and she hadn’t had lunch so she was hungry and asked if I had something for her to eat. I whip up quite the meal by cooking a piece of frozen salmon, serving this with a blob of mustard and some baby carrots (cold). I remember vividly how gross it looks but that’s what you get when you call me on a school day and give me only 30 minutes warning. Thankfully, seven years of practice have made me a much better cook. But after all these years, there is one more thing I still struggle with and it’s sauces. For some reason, they are just one thing I can make without a recipe but I’m working on this and this was the main reason I made this stir-fry.
I’ll come out and say it, P.F. Chang’s chicken lettuce wraps are the best part of America. Unfortunately for me, the nearest P.F. Chang’s is over two hours and an international border away. So when it’s Wednesday evenings and I’m craving that rich, crisp, and saucy delight, I have to make it myself. Which is exactly what I did.
Bruschetta is and always has been one of Élizabeth’s favourite appetizers. I, on the other hand, only started liking it later in life; once I got over my fear of eating pieces of tomato instead of just tomato sauce. The downside of bruschetta is that it’s not very filling to have on it’s own. Enter bruschetta chicken.
My dad is a huge fan of pasta and as a result we ate a lot of them when I was younger. I don’t eat pasta as often now because I realized that they made me sleepy and there is nothing worse than brainfog at 1 PM when you are trying to get school work done. Just like my dad, Jeff is a very big pasta fan and so on occasion we do still eat them but not nearly as often as he would like (or as I did when I lived at home). My mom, our newest blog follower (Allô maman!), is a great cook and her repertoire is filled with great pasta dishes. Of all the pasta dishes my mom prepared for us when I was a child, this meaty macaroni was one of my favorite.
