I thought it only fitting that I should follow up a story about the bounteously heinous discovery in the kitchen crawl space with a recipe for one of our restaurants best selling, if not our signature, entree – Chicken Spiedini.
We brought this dish from a storied Italian eatery in Kansas City, Garozzo’s Ristorente, which built a bit of an empire on the back of this grilled, garlic-laden fowl. The first time I ate at the original location on 5th & Harrison, down near the KC City Market, the waiter suggested the Spiedini over a pasta dish I was tempted to order; I took his advice, and found that I’d never tasted anything quite like it. It was one of those seminal degustatory moments that jarred you into the realization that there was a whole culinary world beyond your mother’s meatloaf. Mr. Garozzo went on to open three more restaurants, including one in Wichita, KS, all of which were fueled by the success of his Spiedini. Chicken Spedini even wrought new, competitive restaurants from former Garozzo employees, including the original Garozzo’s chef who opened his own place, loudly proclaiming himself the inventor of the dish; he didn’t make it a year, while all of the Garozzo’s are still churning out Spiedini.
At The Riverside, we never claimed Chicken Spiedini as an original recipe, but gave due credit by referring to the dish on our first menu as ‘Chicken Spiedini a la Garozzo’. (I’m not certain what ‘a la’ means, but I’d seen it on a lot of other menus, and thought, ‘what the hell’.) I do steadfastly believe that our version was better than Garozzo’s; an opinion that was shared by numerous Kansas-Citians who had eaten the dish in both KC and at The Riverside. The only restaurant review that we ever received in the local paper, good or bad, was a one-line mention in a “What to do this weekend” column from the Sky-High Daily News entertainment writer, saying “try the Chicken Spiedini at The Riverside – it’s incredible!”
While it was immensely popular, it was also very labor intensive to prepare, and in our last few months of operation, down to a single chef, we decided to scrap the dish in favor of easier preparations. Make it at home, and you’ll get a feel for what our kitchen help had to do on a daily basis for the throngs (ok, maybe not throngs; if there had been throngs, we may yet still be in business) of dinner guests who ordered, and adored, Spiedini. I’m proud that we threw very little un-eaten food away at The Riverside, and when we did, never was it Spiedini.
Serves 4
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts
¾ cup flour
¾ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons dried sweet basil
½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1 ½ cup bread crumbs (buy ‘em, don’t make ‘em)
AMOGIO SAUCE
¾ cup olive oil
¾ cup vegetable oil
1 medium-sized head of garlic
1 thin-skinned, damn juicy lemon, juiced
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley
A few hefty grinds of fresh black pepper and a few stout pinches of Kosher salt
You’ll need ka-bob skewers, and in a perfect world, a nice, hot bed of coals to grill the Spiedini over; if you can’t grill, you can also cook the skewers indoors on a hot griddle. Spiedini is an Italian term with the loose translation of ‘skewers of meat or fish, grilled over a flame’; the direct translation is ‘skewers of meat that are slowly prepared, to the sound of blaring heavy-metal/ bad rap music, by highly paid kitchen staff.’
Pound the chicken breasts thin, about a quarter inch thick, and cut length-wise into 1” wide strips. If you’ve pounded your breasts thin enough, you should get 14 – 16 strips from the 2# of chicken.
You’ll also need three prep bowls, one which will contain the ½ cup of olive oil, one the flour, and the third a well-mixed blend of the bread crumbs, the grated parm cheese and the basil flakes.
Lightly salt and pepper the chicken strips, thoroughly wash your hands (this is an important step that was often overlooked by our kitchen staff, no matter how much I yelled at them when I found them preparing this dish, and others, with dirty, filthy hands), and grab a chicken strip. Dredge it in the flour, shake off the excess, dip it in the olive oil, drip off the excess, and dredge it in the bread crumb mixture. Place the coated strip on your work surface and roll it into a pinwheel. Stick this onto a skewer, obviously jamming the business end of the skewer through the entire diameter of the pinwheel, and repeat the process with all of the strips. Dependent upon your dredging, dripping and shaking skills, you may end up needing more flour, oil or bread crumb mix; but you’d have hopefully figured that out on your own, as any cook knows that a recipe is but a yardstick, not a micrometer.
Let your skewered, Spiedini-ed chicken sit patiently on your cooking sheet, and begin preparing the Amogio sauce. Peel your garlic cloves, and chop to a fine dice. Don’t use a garlic press; there is a profound difference in how garlic tastes and reacts to other ingredients when it is chopped versus pressed. Throw your finely diced garlic in a mixing bowl along with all of the other ingredients, and stir it gently with a spoon every so often. Don’t whisk it, as you don’t want to emulsify the lemon juice into the blend. Be gentle.
You can make the Amogio sauce the day before, but needless to say, the longer it sits, the more potent it gets. If you do make it the day before, I’d leave out the freshly squeezed lemon juice; add that closer to meal time. Stir gently after adding the lemon juice.
Grill or griddle your chicken to doneness – and you have to be careful about this, as the rolled up chicken will need to cook through; but be careful not to burn the crap out of the outer portion of the chicken in the process. Grilling is a skill, not to be maligned, chided and laughed at by those who don’t practice, but only eat the fruits of the hot iron grate. The first time we had the dish at the newly opened restaurant of the ‘inventor’ chef, the inner part of our Spiedini was RAW; not undercooked, but blind-ass, naked RAW! The waiter was flustered, and actually said, “Uh, keep this quiet, and the Tiramisu is on the house!” Mmmmm, raw chicken and Tiramisu, one of my favorite Italian delights! What wine goes with that?
To plate, liberally spoon 1/3 cup of the Amogio on a plate, un-skewer the properly grilled chicken onto the pool of sauce, top the chicken and rim the plate with a little finely chopped parsley, spoon another tablespoon or two of the remaining Amogio over the top of the chicken and accompany with sides. I’d suggest a nice penne pasta with a light, slightly sweet marinara sauce as an accompaniment, as you’ll want something all-but bland to offset the punch-in-the-nose you’ll get from the Amogio sauce. Nicely prepared fresh green beans or broccoli will seal the meal.
Listen to some Sinatra and quaff some Chianti, or Amarone, if the finances will allow.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
The Three Portals of Hell....Part V
Really Awful Offal....
In many cases, one would save the best for last. I’ve done the opposite, as the final story of the three Riverside portals is indeed saving the worst, most offensive, most God-awful for last. Portal Number One involved snakes in the bedroom – BUPKIS! Portal Number Two involved bad plumbing, raw sewage and a Meth addict manhandling a rented high-pressure Jetter in the underbelly of the hotel – Sheer Folly!
Portal Number Three involves the kitchen; it involves grease, old food and bad dishwater festering in a darkened crawl space – it involves an agglomeration of things so bad that people actually go to school to become lawyers, so that they can avoid ever having to be within anything short of tort distance from this holy trinity of gluck.
As mentioned previously, the space under the kitchen was original to the hotels 1903 construction. It had a shorter head clearance than the crawl space under the hotel lobby, by maybe a foot; you were in a serious crouch in this space, and in most cases to get done what you had to do when you were down there, you had to kneel on the lengths of 2 x 12s that ran the length of the space. The two kitchen drains ran under this section, both ultimately leading into the infamous ‘grease trap’, a 16” square box that collected…well…the sort of things that would not only turn you into a Boulder-proud vegan, you’d possibly never eat again if you saw what it contained. The exit side of the grease trap consisted of a 3” pipe that ran into the main sewer line in the crawlspace in Portal Number Two, where it joined with the 3” exit pipes from the toilets, sinks and showers.
(Side Note from Richard Paradise, Restaurant/B&B Consultant LLC: If you, the prospective first-time restaurateur and B&B Operator, just read this last paragraph, and you still want to get into the restaurant & hotel business, quickly send me another $10,000, so that I can further counsel, advise and save you $1,000,000 worth of blood, sweat, tears and actual cash money; not to mention the eventual date with your grease trap.)
It was the end of the Easter weekend, 2009, when we were shutting the hotel down, for both a vacation and a kitchen reconstruction. The plan involved a big-bang, farewell Easter brunch, two-weeks out of Hot Sulphur, then a return to gut and replace the old, inherited equipment we’d been dealing with the past year, replace the existing slippery linoleum floor with some kick-ass commercial floor tile I’d scored from an old adhesive-business contact, and be ready to fly by Memorial Day, 2009.
I can’t remember why our chef went into Portal Number Three shortly before our two-week vacation, but he did, and he reported something pretty wretched.
“The pipe from the dishwasher/disposal has a crack in it, and the crawl space is flooded with….uh….well…some pretty bad stuff. There’s, like, a foot of really bad water down there.”
This was one of those times when procrastination seemed the wiser option. There was a basement full of fetid water, that wouldn’t be added to when we were on vacation. We’d rent a pump when we got back from vacation, drain it, fix the pipe, the floor, the kitchen, etc. No point in delaying our much anticipated and much deserved vacation to deal with this seamy little issue. Unlike us, it sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere.
Two weeks later, we’re back at the Riverside, ready for one hell of a floor ripping-up, crawl-space draining good time. I didn’t even bother to look in the flooded crawl space before heading to the local equipment-rental place for a portable sump pump. Money down, pump in hand, we sucked it up and opened the crawl space, to find….no water! Closer inspection found a substance that, much unlike water, was indefinable. Several months full of restaurant flotsam and jetsam, discharging through the dishwashing system through the crack in the exhaust pipe, in small dribs and drabs over the past few months, into the dirt floor of the crawl space, to sit, stew and percolate, had turned into a gel, a goo, an all but living, breathing, writhing clot. There is really no better way to describe this substance other than it being a grayish, rubbery subterranean pudding, smelling like no pudding you could imagine. If evil sought out a smell, it would have latched onto this layer of gloosma like corruption seeks out politicians.
“Crap!” I thought, “I planned on being able to pump this problem out of my life.” No, it would require a shovel, some plastic bags, and me kneeling/crouching in the cramped quarters of the Third Portal of Hell. While my chef honorably offered to do this dirty beyond dirty job, I couldn’t reasonably ask anyone that I was paying less than $140/second to perform this horrific task.
I previously might have mentioned that it smelled really bad; it did, but when the gelatinous smelogma was actually disturbed, i.e., turned and probed by the peak of the spade, the odor that was unleashed from this custard of a thousand previous Riverside dinners was indescribable. It was very quick duty; throw a plastic trash bag in the hole, hold my breath, descend and scrape two or three shovelfuls into the bag, stick my head above the crawl space for a breath of air, hold my breath, and repeat. There were a few times I had to exhale and breathe on my way back up, and the gag reflex was major; just a momentary whiff of what I was excavating was potentially lethal. Any bad human act – you name it; robbery, terror, murder, greed, vengeance - could be averted by the threat of having to smell this hellish concoction.
It took a while, but the job was completed. I might have imagined this, but I don’t think so, as the trash dumpster, containing the bags of crawl space sploojisma, emitted a fluorescent greenish glow from beneath its lid as it sat in our side yard, waiting patiently for the 2nd Tuesday of the month pick-up.
The puddinous spoosma collected, a layer of lime was deposited upon the crawl space floor, eliminating any of the remaining odors, and slaying the resident microbial villains that had been wrought from the no-longer festering foodsmegjisma.
I now live in Mississippi, and am fortunate to have a job with a large corporation. People often ask me “Why would you move from Colorado to Mississippi? Didn’t you love the restaurant business? Aren’t you sorry that you gave up your dream?”
Those are fair questions. If you want the real answer, please contact me at:
Be prepared to spend a Grand. I’ll save you a fortune.
In many cases, one would save the best for last. I’ve done the opposite, as the final story of the three Riverside portals is indeed saving the worst, most offensive, most God-awful for last. Portal Number One involved snakes in the bedroom – BUPKIS! Portal Number Two involved bad plumbing, raw sewage and a Meth addict manhandling a rented high-pressure Jetter in the underbelly of the hotel – Sheer Folly!
Portal Number Three involves the kitchen; it involves grease, old food and bad dishwater festering in a darkened crawl space – it involves an agglomeration of things so bad that people actually go to school to become lawyers, so that they can avoid ever having to be within anything short of tort distance from this holy trinity of gluck.
As mentioned previously, the space under the kitchen was original to the hotels 1903 construction. It had a shorter head clearance than the crawl space under the hotel lobby, by maybe a foot; you were in a serious crouch in this space, and in most cases to get done what you had to do when you were down there, you had to kneel on the lengths of 2 x 12s that ran the length of the space. The two kitchen drains ran under this section, both ultimately leading into the infamous ‘grease trap’, a 16” square box that collected…well…the sort of things that would not only turn you into a Boulder-proud vegan, you’d possibly never eat again if you saw what it contained. The exit side of the grease trap consisted of a 3” pipe that ran into the main sewer line in the crawlspace in Portal Number Two, where it joined with the 3” exit pipes from the toilets, sinks and showers.
(Side Note from Richard Paradise, Restaurant/B&B Consultant LLC: If you, the prospective first-time restaurateur and B&B Operator, just read this last paragraph, and you still want to get into the restaurant & hotel business, quickly send me another $10,000, so that I can further counsel, advise and save you $1,000,000 worth of blood, sweat, tears and actual cash money; not to mention the eventual date with your grease trap.)
It was the end of the Easter weekend, 2009, when we were shutting the hotel down, for both a vacation and a kitchen reconstruction. The plan involved a big-bang, farewell Easter brunch, two-weeks out of Hot Sulphur, then a return to gut and replace the old, inherited equipment we’d been dealing with the past year, replace the existing slippery linoleum floor with some kick-ass commercial floor tile I’d scored from an old adhesive-business contact, and be ready to fly by Memorial Day, 2009.
I can’t remember why our chef went into Portal Number Three shortly before our two-week vacation, but he did, and he reported something pretty wretched.
“The pipe from the dishwasher/disposal has a crack in it, and the crawl space is flooded with….uh….well…some pretty bad stuff. There’s, like, a foot of really bad water down there.”
This was one of those times when procrastination seemed the wiser option. There was a basement full of fetid water, that wouldn’t be added to when we were on vacation. We’d rent a pump when we got back from vacation, drain it, fix the pipe, the floor, the kitchen, etc. No point in delaying our much anticipated and much deserved vacation to deal with this seamy little issue. Unlike us, it sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere.
Two weeks later, we’re back at the Riverside, ready for one hell of a floor ripping-up, crawl-space draining good time. I didn’t even bother to look in the flooded crawl space before heading to the local equipment-rental place for a portable sump pump. Money down, pump in hand, we sucked it up and opened the crawl space, to find….no water! Closer inspection found a substance that, much unlike water, was indefinable. Several months full of restaurant flotsam and jetsam, discharging through the dishwashing system through the crack in the exhaust pipe, in small dribs and drabs over the past few months, into the dirt floor of the crawl space, to sit, stew and percolate, had turned into a gel, a goo, an all but living, breathing, writhing clot. There is really no better way to describe this substance other than it being a grayish, rubbery subterranean pudding, smelling like no pudding you could imagine. If evil sought out a smell, it would have latched onto this layer of gloosma like corruption seeks out politicians.
“Crap!” I thought, “I planned on being able to pump this problem out of my life.” No, it would require a shovel, some plastic bags, and me kneeling/crouching in the cramped quarters of the Third Portal of Hell. While my chef honorably offered to do this dirty beyond dirty job, I couldn’t reasonably ask anyone that I was paying less than $140/second to perform this horrific task.
I previously might have mentioned that it smelled really bad; it did, but when the gelatinous smelogma was actually disturbed, i.e., turned and probed by the peak of the spade, the odor that was unleashed from this custard of a thousand previous Riverside dinners was indescribable. It was very quick duty; throw a plastic trash bag in the hole, hold my breath, descend and scrape two or three shovelfuls into the bag, stick my head above the crawl space for a breath of air, hold my breath, and repeat. There were a few times I had to exhale and breathe on my way back up, and the gag reflex was major; just a momentary whiff of what I was excavating was potentially lethal. Any bad human act – you name it; robbery, terror, murder, greed, vengeance - could be averted by the threat of having to smell this hellish concoction.
It took a while, but the job was completed. I might have imagined this, but I don’t think so, as the trash dumpster, containing the bags of crawl space sploojisma, emitted a fluorescent greenish glow from beneath its lid as it sat in our side yard, waiting patiently for the 2nd Tuesday of the month pick-up.
The puddinous spoosma collected, a layer of lime was deposited upon the crawl space floor, eliminating any of the remaining odors, and slaying the resident microbial villains that had been wrought from the no-longer festering foodsmegjisma.
I now live in Mississippi, and am fortunate to have a job with a large corporation. People often ask me “Why would you move from Colorado to Mississippi? Didn’t you love the restaurant business? Aren’t you sorry that you gave up your dream?”
Those are fair questions. If you want the real answer, please contact me at:
rwparadise.restaurantconsultant.com/hellportal
Be prepared to spend a Grand. I’ll save you a fortune.
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