Merican / Principal Chef

“Put Some Mustard On That!” Warm (or cold!) Potato Salad

My friend Michelle is an amazing cook. She’s also a fantastic teacher and principal, but cooking has remained a big part of her life, and she has been a wonderful source of information and inspiration for me over the years. This is based on one of her PUBLISHED RECIPES! The only reason my recipes are published is that I make this website! She’s the real deal and you can find the original recipe here . I love this recipe. It’s a fantastic go-to potato salad for dinner or a picnic/bbq lunch. My friend Maggie, who is both a great artist and fantastic cook, took the picture below when she made this for a lunch she was hosting. Thanks Maggie!

Ingredients

2 lbs Small Red Potatoes

⅔ cup Mayo

⅓ cup Mustard (I use a mix of grain and dijon)

¾ cup Chopped Red Onion

5 Garlic Cloves, Crushed or Chopped

1 tsp Salt

1 tsp Course ground black pepper)

½ Lime, freshly juiced

3 tbsp Freshly chopped dill or parsley or some fresh herbThe original recipe calls for dill, but I prefer the parsley.

3 Green Onions (chopped, for garnish)

Directions

Boil potatoes for 25 minutes – test as they get close. Drain and rinse. If you are a food temperature fanatic (Thermapen fans, unite!) – somewhere between 200 and 210 degrees.

While the potatoes are cooking, prepare the mixture.

Mix all ingredients together except for green onions. This is a mustard heavy version of the recipe. If you’re not a huge mustard fan (I won’t judge), you can replace some of the mustard with Mayo. The original recipe had a 1 cup of mayo and 1/4 cup of mustard.

Cut potatoes into the size you want them. Don’t go too small – the texture is great. I tend to quarter them.

Mix together, add green onions for garnish, and serve warm, or cool down and serve cold. It’s great either way!

Skillet Cornbread

I love cornbread. Always have. I’ve gone through phrases in how I made it. My recipe for years was the Marie Calender’s mix, which was a little sweet, but so easy, and really, really good. Then, my mom made this recipe for me a few years ago. It is a non-sweet cornbread with a super crispy kissed-by-butter exterior. And on top of being the best-tasting cornbread I’ve had, it’s yet one more opportunity to utilize your cast iron skillet. Bring this to a pot luck or your own table and once again, you are a hero for the day!

Ingredients

1 cup Yellow CornmealI used Bob's Red Mill Brand Medium Grind Corn Meal

½ cup All Purpose Flour

1 tsp Salt

1 cup ButtermilkIf you don't have buttermilk, you can use milk with 1 lemon squeezed and set aside for 10 minutes, or 1/2 cup sour cream & 1/2 cup milk

½ cup Whole MilkLowfat is OK too. We're a whole milk family.

1 Egg

1 tbsp Baking Powder

½ tsp Baking Soda

1 tbsp Canola Oil

3 tbsp Butter

Directions

Mix Cornmeal, Flour, and Salt in a large bowl.

Add (without stirring) all remaining ingredients except butter and canola oil.

Hand stir (no mixer) and mix well with a large spoon. A few lumps are good. It’s not as thick as you think it should be – thinner than pancake batter – but that’s OK.

Place 9″ or 10″ cast iron skillet and in 450 degree oven for 5 minutes. It will begin to smoke.

Note: If you are doubling the recipe, a 12″ cast iron skillet is perfect.

Take the skillet out, then add butter and canola oil. Let the butter melt, then pour in the cornbread mixture.

Bake for 15-20 minutes at 450 degrees, until the top is brown and the sides pull away from the edges of the skillet. If you are a Thermapen temperature geek like me, the center should be at least 185 degrees.

Disneyland Turkey Legs (aka Caveman Pops)

My family loves Disneyland. They go several times a year, and if we lived closer, they’d go more. I go once a year and enjoy myself immensely. But . . . I don’t need or want more than that. What I do love about Disneyland, and if I lived closer might be worth the price of an annual passport, is their high quality turkey legs. Caveman Pops. I love a good meal on a stick, and this is the mountaintop of such meals. This is my attempt at reaching the Caveman Pop Summit. Enjoy!

Ingredients

4 Turkey Legs – Medium Sized to Large. These are easy to find at Thanksgiving, but you may have to ask your butcher ahead of time other times of the year.

¼ cup Arkibu Rub , or other BBQ Rub

½ cup Honey

Directions

The night before you want to cook these, rub them with Arkibu BBQ Rub.

Fire up the Big Green Egg, or your favorite indirect heat smoker. I put it to 300 degrees. Prepare some apple or pecan wood chips by soaking them in water.

Add chips, lay turkey legs on the grill, and smoke until they are done. Time will depend on the size. 40 minutes to a little over an hour. Use your Thermapen. Take it off when the bottom thinner meat starts to separate from the bone, and when the meat is 180 degrees.

Place in a casserole pan or something and cover with foil until you close to being ready serve. Remember – for food to be safe, don’t let it sit if it’s under 140 degrees.

When you are ready to serve, coat each leg with a lot of honey, brushing it all over the meat.

Fire up a direct heat grill (I use my Weber Genesis Grill), spray some cooking spray on it, and sear the honey-coated goodness in, about five minutes per side.

Caveman Heaven

Wrap each leg in foil, and serve when you are ready!

Pastrami Cheeseburgers

Guy Fieri from Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives loves a good burger, and so do we! His favorite burger is the Pastrami Burger from a place called Hodad’s in San Diego. Mike Hardin , who ran the place until he recently passed away, had a tatoo of Guy on his thigh. I’m not going to do that. But I’m still a fan, and we will go there one day, have this burger and meet his son who’s now running the place. In the meantime, it’s a good day when pastrami cheeseburgers are happening in my house.

One of the keys to recipes is the amount of mustard you put on the bottom bun of each burger. It’s a lot! But when I was serving these up to my son Ryan and his friends, his friend Dusty said, “Mike. I now know what you’re superpower is. It’s mustard. Nobody else knows the right amount of mustard like you do.” So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

Ingredients

¼ lb hamburger per person. 85/15 is the leanest you should go.I usually make 1/3 pound burgers, but there's so much pastrami, a thin patty works out great.

¼ lb Beef Pastrami, per person. Thinly sliced from your favorite deli. Get more than this, and make some great sandwiches this week.

1 Slice cheese per person, swiss is nice here, but choose your own.

½ Onion, sliced, per person

1 Soft Hamburger Bun, per person. Brioche buns are hot right now, but find a good one.

Mustard, Yellow, Dijon, Spice – the one you like the most with pastrami or a burger.

Ketchup

Soy Sauce

Montreal Steak Seasoning

Directions

Season burgers like you season steaks. Soy sauce and Montreal Steak Seasoning.

Slice onion thinly and saute in olive oil until nice and browned. Take them out and set aside.

Grill the burger to your satisfaction. I’m a medium well to well done burger guy. Please don’t judge. I like the outdoor bbq grill more, but you can use a griddle or cast iron skillet indoors. That’s how Hodad’s does it.

Just before the burger is done, heat the thinly sliced pastrami. I do this in the cast iron skillet with a tiny bit of oil.

Add cheese to the burger, close the lid, and let it melt for no more than 1 minute.

Assembling the burger

Start with the bottom half of the bun. Put twice as much mustard as you usually put on a burger. Twice. May be 2 and a half times. Go big.

Put the burger with cheese on the mustard-laden bottom bun. Add enough pastrami to make a decent-sized pastrami sandwich. Not a NY Deli sized pastrami sandwich, but enough to be good by itself.

Add the grilled onions. This is a big burger!

Put a normal sized amount of ketchup on top, place the bun, slice in half if you want, and you are ready to go!

Jilly’s Chili (2014 Malibu West Chili Cook-Off Winner!)

Every Halloween, we get a LOT of trick or treaters at our house. Like 500. Kind of crazy. We always have hot dogs, hot links, cole slaw, and chili for any of our friends who want to take a short break. They can get some food and a beverage while thier kids count and/or trade their loot. Jilly’s Chili is the star of the show. People know it’s no ordinary chili. She won the Malibu West Chili Cookoff, and Jilly’s name is perpetually engraved on the Malibu West Chili Cook Off plaque. Yes – That is big. Really big. She deserves it. Jilly’s Chili is vegetarian, it’s real, and it’s spectacular.

Ingredients

1 Can Kidney Beans, drained

1 Can Black Beans, drained

1 Can Pinto Beans, drained

1 Can Garbanzo Beans, drained

1 cup Corn, Frozen or Fresh

1 Red Pepper, diced

1 Green Pepper, diced

2 Carrots, peeled and diced

1 Red Onion, diced

28 oz Crushed Tomatoes

1 cup Vegetable Broth

5 Garlic Cloves, minced

1.50 tsp Chili Powder

1 tsp Cumin

1 tsp Corriander

1 tsp Cocoa Powder, unsweetened (Ghirardelli is great stuff)

½ tsp Garlic Powder

⅛ tsp Cayenne Pepper

½ tsp Salt

1 tsp Smoked Paprika

3 tbsp Butter

Optional Toppings: Shredded Cheddar Cheese, Sour Cream, Chives,

Directions

Chop the garlic, onion, and bell peppers. Sauté lightly in a large pot over medium high heat in 1-2 tsp olive oil.

Add the rest of the ingredients, except for the toppings of course! Sauté for at least one hour. It’s even better on day 2.

Chicken Wings

Wings are something I’ve always enjoyed, but I’ve never made them until recently. I’m a fried chicken lover, but it’s so much work, and until I get an outdoor fryer, I’m steering clear. When I do, chickens and catfish beware! These wings are not too hard to make, and the results are fantastic.

Ingredients

1.50 lbs Chicken Wings, per person

BBQ Rub or Marinade*

¾ cup Cholula Hot Sauce Or Your Favorite Hot Sauce

8 oz Butter (1 stick)

⅛ cup White Vinegar

½ tsp Garlic Salt

Directions

Sprinkle some Arkibu Rub or Salt and Pepper on the wings at least one hour before cooking. Doing it overnight is even better. You can also marinate it in Hot Sauce or Teriyaki sauce or Korean Marinade. I recommend the rub before and the sauce after.

Preheat oven to 350 and get a grill or your Big Green Egg going at about 400 degrees.

Put seasoned wings on a rimmed baking sheet or in a 9×13 pan and roast in the oven for about 20 minutes. Remove and head outside.

Put the wings over direct heat for about 5 minutes, then turn and heat for another 5 minutes. They should be beautifully crisped up by now. You don’t need to sauce them up on the grill.

Make the sauce. Melt the butter, and add hot sauce, vinegar, and garlic salt.

Put wings in a big stainless steel bowl, pour sauce over them, and move the bowl around so that the wings spin around until they are coated and ready to go. (This is what restaurants call the “hand spun” wings. Such a crazy way to describe a simple process.)

Add some green onions or blue cheese sauce if you like. I like having celery too, as it turns this into a health food dish.

Pineapple Salsa

This is a fresh and wonderful addition to fish, turkey, or chicken. It’s great with grilled food. Very simple to do, but it’s better if you make it ahead of time and let it marinate in its own juices.

Ingredients

1 tbsp Rice Vinegar or White Wine Vinegar (Rice Vinegar is much cleaner)

½ tsp Salt

½ tsp Cayenne Pepper

1 Pineapple, Cored and Chopped into small pieces.(If you are in a pinch, 2 cans of sliced pineapple will do.)

½ Red Onion, minced

1 cup Cilantro, washed and chopped

Directions

Chop and drain pineapple. Mix all ingredients together and chill for at least one hour.

Chicken and Biscuits

When I was in high school, I often came home from school very late during swim season. I would miss the family dinner, but my Mom always had food waiting for me. One oof my favorites was chicken and dumplings. There are many recipes in the same family. A hot and thick stew with chicken and vegetables, with either dumplings, pie crust, or biscuits. Over time, I have fallen more and more in love with biscuits, so why not eat them whenever you can. (Other than the obvious caloric reasons, which we should not even mention here!)

This recipe is a combination of Ina Garten’s chicken stew and Joanna Gaines’ biscuits.

Ingredients

1 Rotisserie Chicken (Hard to beat Costco’s)(That's about 5 or 6 cups of chicken!)

5 cups Chicken Stock

2 cups Onions, chopped

4 Stalks of Celery, washed and chopped

¾ cup Flour

6 Carrots, peeled and chopped

1.50 cups Frozen Small OnionsI love these – you don't need them, but they make the dish look way better!

1 cup Fresh or Frozen Peas

½ cup Fresh Parsley

Salt, Pepper

12 tbsp Butter (1 and a half sticks)

Directions

Preparing the Stew

Take the meat off of the Rotisserie Chicken., and put the carcass in just enough water to cover it up. Add some onions, carrots, celery and a bay leaf, boil then simmer for 90 – 120 minutes, and you will have an outstanding broth. 90 Minutes

Begin the stew by making a roux. Melt 1.5 sticks of butter in a stock pot, add 2 chopped onions and chopped celery and sauté for 10 minutes or a little longer. Add the flour and stir for two minutes until it is quite thick.

Gradually add 5 cups hot chicken stock to the roux , stirring all along. Simmer and heat for 3-5 minutes.

Add carrots, peas, chicken, small whole onions and parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste. Start with 1 tsp pepper and 1 tsp salt. For me, it depends on the saltiness of the broth. Feel it from there! Ina’s original recipe called for some half and half to add creaminess , but I really don’t think you need it. Put aside until you are ready to cook. You can refrigerate this at this point.*

Making the Biscuits

Just follow my adaptation of Joanna Gaines biscuit recipe .

Putting It All Together

When you are ready to cook, place the stew in a healthy big casserole dish (a little deeper than a normal 9×13 if you have it) and heat it until it is quite warm. This may take 15-25 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

After the stew is warm, place the biscuits on top and bake for another 30 minutes.

Take out and serve with a nice salad, or, since it has all the food groups in there (biscuits and everything else) just serve it on its own.

Grilled Salmon

Salmon is by far the most common fish that we eat. Our youngest son loves it. It’s easy. It’s available in many different varieties, and it’s usually fresh. That’s my brother Bill up in Washington catching himself a big salmon and loving it! Grilled salmon is a great dish any time of the year where the bbq is in use. Why not tonight?

Ingredients

1 Salmon Fillet with skin on – 1/2 to 3/4 pound per person

1 tbsp Olive Oil

1 tsp Lemon Pepper

½ Lemon per person

Directions

Get your grill ready to go – somewhere between 400 and 450 degrees. Clean the grates well. I know there are men out there who believe that cleaning grills takes all of that flavor away. Dudes. That’s the worst idea ever. Clean your grates before you cook and after you cook!

Spread the olive oil over both sides of the filet – use a brush or your clean fingers. Sprinkle lemon pepper liberally on non-skin side. If you don’t have lemon pepper, plain old salt and pepper will do just fine.

There are different philosophies of how to keep quick cooking foods from sticking to the grill. A common adage is “Oil the food, not the grill.” For me, with fish, I like to do both. You need the meat side of the fish to get a nice sear on it, then the rest of the cooking can be with the skin side down. So I oil the fish, and I either spray the grates with cooking spray (safely from a distance) or take some tongs and oiled paper towels and coat the grates that way. You need about four minutes of non-stickiness, and the combo does it nicely.

Place filet on hot grill, skin side up. Grill for 3 minutes. After a minute or so, put your spatula under there, not shifting position, just to make sure the fish is not sticking. With a spatula, turn 90 degrees and grill for 3 more minutes. Do the same non-stick trick after a minute and a half. Use a spatula to turn over. It should look nice like this picture!

Now comes the easy part. Close grill and cook for another 3-6 minutes, until the temperature reaches 130. Some people may like it a little more well done, but in my humble opinion, 130 is the perfect salmon temperature.

Take out with a large spatula. The skin may come off when you pull it off, and that’s OK. Place on plate so that the cross hatched grill marks show nicely. Squeeze some lemon over the fish and you are ready to serve!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

It’s not often that a dad gets to be a hero. But every time I get two sticks of salted butter out of the refrigerator and ceremoniously lay (or for more effect, slap) them out to soften, there is an audible cheer in the house. They’re that good. And it’s just the old (not the updated!) version of the Quaker Oats recipe, with a few ever so slight changes.

So here’s the thing. If you buy a cardboard cannister of Quaker Oats, you still find the recipe for their “Vanishing Oatmeal Cookies” on the underside of the lid. But don’t be fooled. It’s the updated version, with way less butter. As the drive-in movie review columnist Joe Bob Briggs says, “Communist Alert!” As any chef, more butter is better. So let’s stick with the old recipe, get rid of those pesky raisins, and add some chocolate chips. Here’s my recipe.

Ingredients

3 cups Quaker Oats (Old Fashioned are the best)

1.50 cups White Flour

¾ tsp Kosher Salt

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Cinnamon

1 cup Butter (Two Sticks), Softened

1 cup Brown Sugar

½ cup White Granulated Sugar

2 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

1 cup Chocolate Chips, Semisweet

Directions

Mix Dry Ingredients (First Five) in a bowl.

In a mixer, mix butter and sugar. Beat until smooth. Mix in eggs and vanilla.

Mix wet and dry ingredients in one bowl.

Add chocolate chips and mix in.

Bake for 10 minutes in 325 degree convection oven, or 350 degrees regular oven. Removed when browned.

Cool on rack, then serve while they are still warm.

If you want to save dough, wrap in wax paper, then place in plastic bag. Thaw for at least 30 minutes before cooking.

Jilly’s Mini Pumpkin Pies

Once the Halloween Tree goes up, it’s time for Jilly’s Mini Pumpkin Pies! My wife Jill is an inventor. She has invented so many things over her life, the smartphone for example. She was way ahead of Steve Jobs. In 2003, long before the first iPhone in 2007, when she was holding her Treo 300 Palm Pilot in one hand, and her cell phone in the other, she knew they should be merged as one. We don’t make a lot of money off of her inventions, but we enjoy it when someone else finally figures it out.

These mini-pumpkin pies may be one of her greatest inventions. A friend of ours published the recipe in a cookbook, but did not give Jill credit. She’s OK with that, but come on! I bet we make five or six batches of this every fall. They’re a great dessert, breakfast, snack, or whatever you want them to be.

And here’s how I eat them. I peel away the muffin liner, hold the mini-pie in my hand, put whipped cream on top of that, and eat it in three bites. Let us know what style works best for you!

Oh! And that picture below? That’s Jill getting the honor of putting the witch on top of the old Halloween Tree! Wait. You don’t all do that? Our holiday tree comes out in October and becomes a Halloween Tree, then a Thanksgiving Tree, then a Christmas Tree. And if I had it my way, it would stay up the whole year long, arborally celebrating the different holidays. Alas, like many things in my home, I don’t get it my way, and I live with nine, sad, holiday treeless months. But I can’t wait for October!

Ingredients

1 14.5 oz Can Pumpkin – We Like Libby’s

1 Can, Sweetened Condensed Milk

2 tsp Pumpkin Pie SpiceWe think McCormick's is the best brand for this

2 Eggs

28 Ginger SnapsThe Nabisco Ginger Snaps are perfect.

Whipped CreamI usually like homemade, but the spray can works so well here.

Directions

Mix pumpkin, sweetened condensed milk, pumpkin pie spice, and eggs in a mixer or with a spoon.

(Note: If you want to make a big pie, just pour this into a pie crust and bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes, then 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes, until a knife/toothpick comes out cleanly.)

Put a Gingersnap in the bottom of 28 foil cupcake cups arranged on 8.5 x 13 casserole dishes. Put 1/4 cup mix in each cupcake cup.

Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then at 350 for 20 minutes.

Let cool. Then serve with whipped cream!

Chocolate Pecan Pie

This is one of my all time favorites, combining southern pecan pie and chocolate. How bad can that be? It is really, really rich, and I like it best served a little warm with some whipped cream.

Ingredients

2 tbsp Butter

3 oz Unsweetened Chocolate

2 tbsp Flour

½ tsp Salt

3 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

¾ cup Sugar (White)

2 cups Pecan Halves

1 cup Dark Karo Syrup

Directions

Prepare the crust. To make it easy on yourself, you can use refrigerated crusts, which are a distant but still good second. To make a great homemade crust, use Martha Stewart’s awesome recipe .

Spray cooking spray in a pyrex measuring cup or microwave safe bowl. Microwave chocolate squares for 3 minutes or until they are melted. Watch the microwave carefully. Don’t let it keep going after it melts.

Add butter to melted chocolate. It can melt by itself or you can microwave it another 15 seconds.

In separate large bowl, mix sugar, salt, and flour. Stir in eggs and Karo syrup. Add Chocolate/Butter Mixture. Add Vanilla and Pecans and mix together.

Pour into pie shell. Bake at 350 for 60-70 minutes, until it slightly browned on top and a knife comes out clean.