1001: Frank Sinatra: In The Wee Small Hours

Frank Sinatra: In The Wee Small Hours

First Listen: While Driving, Car Audio Speakers via Bluetooth

Second Listen: At Home, Bose Lifestyle 15 Audio via Chromecast.

Third Listen: Coffee Shop, Samsung stock headphones with Galaxy Note Three while reading lyrics.

I’m pretty familiar with Frank Sinatra, as I sure most people are, but to be honest, when I heard this album, I don’t think I ever heard any of these songs before.  The songs on this album haven’t quite reached the level of popularity as such tracks as Come Fly With Me, which is incredibly popular.  For what it’s worth, the album itself is extremely melancholy.  The songs themselves are short and direct to the point.

The Music

Favorite tracks:

-I Get Along Very Well: This is a perfect break up song.  I love the overall sarcasm of the song. 

-Can’t We Be Friends: It’s the start of this song that I love more than anything.  It hits you as pure storytelling.  There is something pure to the vocal quality that Frank has that is further showcased by the limited number of instruments in the beginning.  For the first few moments of that song it is just you and Frank with a few simple notes on a piano.

Unfavorite tracks:

To be clear, I don’t really dislike any of the tracks on this album, here are just the three I like least of all.

-Last Night When We Were Young: Call me crazy but I don’t care for the dramatic buildup of the song.  When you measure the lyrical content of the song against the slightly overproduced orchestral music in the background, the lyrics almost come across as an afterthought, and are the most unmemorable of the album.

-I’ll Be Around: Sweet or Creepy? Though this song doesn’t particularly drift into the sheer stalky nature of say Sting’s Every Breath You Take, still even though it isn’t quite as creepy, it sort of flirts on the edge of that territory.  Then again, that may just be a quality of there being no hopelessness to my romanticism.  Unrequited love is quite foolish.

Overall Listing

1. Frank Sinatra: In The Wee Small Hours

The Food

Completely unnecessary but I did make fresh pasta for this.
Recipe is not included because I don't know how much of anything I used
and I ended up making like 3 pounds of pasta.

It was rather difficult to track down food of the 1950’s era that I found appealing.  I did do some digging in order to see what were Sinatra’s favorite food and drinks were.  He loved Italian as well as Whiskey and Water.  I wanted to take some of the popular dishes of the era and adapt it into something tasty with a bit of a fresh twist that is a departure from the overuse of canned products during the era.

Menu:

-Italian Style Gougeres with Sun Dried Tomatoes:  A slight bit of French/Italian fusion into this easy appetizer that combines salty Parmesan with tart sun dried tomatoes to make this near perfect puff of pastry that is reminiscent of a nice pizza.

-Chicken A La King: Not Italian again, but it was wildly popular in the 1950’s.  I also wanted to do a versatile dish, because Dylan was there.  This dish allowed me to share the sauce that I built that was pretty tasty between the two proteins that I used Chicken and tofu, to make a omnivorous dish for me and a vegetarian one for him with just one more pan.

-Creamed Asparagus:  This was a very simple dish.  I used the water that I had on for the pasta to quickly blanch the asparagus before pairing it with a simple roux based white wine and cream sauce.

-Classic Sidecar:  Whisky and water was a bit to simplistic of a drink for me so I went with something traditional and tasty.  This version is one of the few sweeter drinks that I really enjoy and has a nice tartness from the lemon.

Italian Style Gougeres

1 cup water

1-1/2 cups flour

½ Cup Grated Parmasean Cheese

¾ Cup Butter

½ Teaspoon Salt

Four Eggs

¼ Cup Sun Dried Tomatoes Diced

Preheat Oven to 425F

Bring Butter, Water and Salt to a boil.

Adding flour and stir until dough starts to form and then add Cheese and tomatoes.  Stir until you are left with a dough ball

Add to the bowl of a stand mixer, and let cool for a couple minutes.  Start the mixer on low speed.  Add the eggs.

Pipe out onto a parchment lined baking sheet and dot each with a bit of water before baking.

Bake at 425F for 10 mins and then at 350F for another 10 mins.

Chicken A La King

8 Ounces Mushrooms

3 Red Peppers

1 Sweet Onion

2 Cloves Garlic

3 Bay Leaves

1 Cup Sherry

½ Cup Stock

½ Cup Cream

2 Tablespoons Butter

½ Tablespoon Dried Herb de Provence

1 Pound Protein (I used Chicken thighs for the chicken dish and firm tofu)

Roast red peppers, they take the longest so you should start with this.  I roast the peppers  on my stove by placing the peppers over high heat directly over the flame of my gas stove.  This can also be done under a broiler.  I then transfer them to a covered bowl and leave them until they’re cooled, then I remove the skin under running water and slice the peppers.

Sweat the onions with the bay leafs and season with salt and pepper.  When the onions start to become translucent, add the mushrooms sherry and stock cover and simmer.

If you’re doing the chicken, season it with the salt pepper and herb de Provence and brown it on both sides.  Once the chicken is done browning add the sauce and simmer until cooked through.  Finish the sauce with the cream.

If you’re doing the tofu, once your liquid has reduced by about half brown the tofu and add the tofu and cream to the sauce.

Serve all this tossed in cooked egg noodles.

Creamed Asparagus

½ Pound Asparagus

¼ Cup Dry white wine

1 Tablespoon Butter

1 Tablespoon Flour

¼ Cup Cream

¼ Cup grated Parmesan Cheese

Fresh Ground Black Pepper

Combine the butter and flower in a small sauce pan over medium heat.

Whisk in the white wine and parmesan cheese.

Add cream and continue whisking

Serve sauce over blanched asparagus woody ends removed.

The Drink: 

Sidecar

3 Ounces Whiskey

½ Ounce Triple Sec

Juice of Half a Lemon

1 Teaspoon Sugar

Shake all the ingredients together and serve in a rocks glass with a lemon twist.

Chipotle Soup with Sweet Potato Gnocchi

I made this soup as a use up for everything in my fridge, and I had red beans already at home.  It would probably be better with black beans.  Still it came out pretty tasty.  I really have been on food blogs a lot and it inspired me to spend some of my time off not going out to eat but sitting at home and really cooking.  I have been making a lot of vegetarian/vegan dishes because I've been hanging around with a lot of those types lately which is kind of a bummer but it is awesome when I make a dish that is satisfying without including meat.  This soup probably wasn't vegetarian though because I don't label my stock before putting it in the freezer, and I don't know if it was chicken or vegetable.  I had to buy some sharpie markers right away.

Ingredients:
For the Soup:
1.5 Cups Dried Red Beans
1 Quart Vegetable Stock
2 Chipolte peppers in Adobo sauce
3 Tablespoons Adobo
1 Cup dry white wine
1.5 lbs Zucchini
2  Bay Leaves

For the Gnocchi
2 lb Sweet Potatoes
2.5 cups flour
2 Eggs
4 Tablespoons Cilantro
2 Tablespoons Salt
8 oz Cotija Cheese
1 Tablespoon Adobo

For the Green Onion Sauce:
1/2 Bunch of Green Onions
1 Poblano Chilie
1/2 cup Olive Oil
Juice of two limes

To Prepare the Soup:

1. Cook the red beans in the veg stock until tender (for this I used my slow cooker on low the entire time I was at work, roughly ten hours.  You could of course use canned beans instead.
2. Finley chop the chipotle peppers and add to the soup with all of the remaining ingredients but the zucchini and simmer for 30 minutes.
3. Add the zucchini and simmer until desired tenderness (about 10 minutes for my taste).

To Prepare the Gnocchi:

1. Peel and dice the sweet potatoes and add them to cold water.  Bring the water to a boil and boil until tender.
2. Mash the potatoes (I use my KitchenAid Stand Mixer to accomplish this task by going on speed 3 for a few minutes you can just use a masher the old fashioned way though).
3. At this point I add the cilantro salt and adobo and mix until it is incorporated and give the potatoes a bit of time to cool.
4. I mix in the eggs and flour until you basically get one big dough ball.
5. Then  I scoop out the dough and make very unevenly sized balls of the potato dough and stuff them with the cotija cheese, which I diced in to also very uneven 1/4-1/8 inch cubes.  A little extra flour keeps things from getting too sticky.
6. I added them to well salted boiling water and cooked until they floated. Stirring the pot after they were in for about 30 seconds because they do stick.
7. (Bonus Step)  To add in a bit more flavor, I brought a tablespoon each of Butter and Olive oil over medium heat to just caramelize the sides of the gnocchi.

For the Green Chilie Sauce:

1. Remove the stem and seeds from the chilie. Put everything in a blender and blend until relatively smooth.  (I can't really make it much simpler than that).

Bonus Recipe:  Champagne Granita

This is a awesome frozen dessert I made using a bottle of cheap sparkling wine (Come on people you actually think I have enough money to just go making desserts with bottles of Champagne, I mean I wish but no).  To make the dessert I combined a bottle of Champagne with Naked Berry Blast.  I was going to juice my own strawberries for this but I was kind of over the idea with all of the work I had to do with the Gnocchi.  I garnished with fresh mint.  To make it you basically combine the bottle of Champagne with a 16 oz bottle of the juice and a couple of tablespoons of honey.  put it in the freezer, and come back in a while when it's part way frozen, mix it up with a fork and do that again every few hours until you basically have like a grown up snow cone.