It's one thing to start out with a positive jam

But the Friday Newsletter is here to see it on through.

Can I let you in on a little secret?

I keep track of things.

Not the things I need to, that is—my actual practical organizational skills could use some work, in all honestly—but I keep obsessive track the things I want to. I love making a list. For nearly the entire time I have been writing this newsletter, I’ve scrupulously maintained a spreadsheet where I keep track of all of the metrics I can related to traffic, frequency, etc.

Because of that, I’ve been eyeing today for several months.

You see, this is 400th edition of The Action Cookbook Newsletter, a milestone that would’ve seemed unfathomable to me when I first launched this in the summer of 2019. I started writing here, and I just haven’t stopped—three times a week, (almost) without fail, every week for more than 2-1/2 years. I’ve now written more things here than I have anywhere else, and I have no intention of stopping any time soon.

It’s a lot of work, but it’s been a labor of love, and there’s no way I could have done it without you. I’m blown away by this every time I look at the number of people who have subscribed to have my writing beamed directly to your inboxes, and that total just keeps going up.

I’m incredibly grateful for your readership, comments, contributions and support.

Today, I want to give back. I’ve got a few exciting promotions to share today, both for existing subscribers and new.

Of course, this means there’s never been a better time to subscribe!

We’ll get to those incentives in a little bit, though.

First, I’ve got a loaded slate of Friday content to offer you for my quatercentenary newsletter, one guaranteed¹ to set your weekend on a course for greatness.

It’s Friday. Welcome back to the weekend.

7) The boldest flavors bread has ever seen

January’s almost over. We can stop pretending we’re going to eat healthy this year, right? Besides, there’s some big football games this weekend, and you don’t win conference championships with salad. We need something bold, brave and strong of flavor to fortify us in these frigid winter times.

I always try to disclose the genesis when recipes here are inspired by existing recipes; this one was brought on by a recent one published by King Arthur Flour for a savory “pizza babka”, something I left open on the countertop for two weeks, daydreaming about it and thinking about how I cook ActionCookbookify it.

Finally, it hit me.

Chipotle Cheddar Chorizo Bread.

Three of my favorite ingredients together, a supergroup of flavor, all baked together in a braided load of sheer deliciousness.

To make this, you’ll pull together a pretty basic bread dough, stretch it out into a rectangle, spread it with delicious fillings, roll it, slice it, braid it and bake it. It sounds like a lot of work, but it’s not as difficult as you might think. It’s a perfect late-morning/early-afternoon project while you’re awaiting kickoff of this Sunday’s games.

For the dough:

Note: I always use a digital scale for baking, but I’ve attempted to convert ingredients if you don’t use one.

• 500g Type 00 or all-purpose flour (approximately 3 cups plus 2 tablespoons)

• 9 grams / one tablespoon instant yeast

• 3 grams / one-half teaspoon kosher salt

• 14 grams/ 2 tablespoons nonfat dry milk

• 1 egg

• 236 grams / 1 cup water

• 3 tablespoons oil (see note)

A note on the oil: I decided to get extra spicy and use chili-infused oil in the dough itself. It worked, almost too well. If you choose to go this route, I would pnly recommend using chili oil for one of the three tablespoons.

Combine all the ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook, and knead for 8 minutes on medium-low. (Alternately, combine in a mixing bowl and knead by hand for 10 minutes.) Remove dough ball to a lightly-oiled bowl, turn to coat, cover the bowl tightly with plastic and allow to proof for 90 minutes.

Once the dough has at least doubled, dump it out onto a floured surface or silicone mat, and gently stretch to a 10x14” rectangle.

Now, the filling:

• 12 ounces soft Mexican chorizo, removed from casing

• 2-3 chipotle peppers in adobo, finely chopped

• 8 ounces shredded cheddar and/or jack cheese

Brown the chorizo in a pan to partially cook; stir in the peppers while cooking. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Using a spatula, gently spread the chorizo mixture across the entire surface of the dough rectangle, then evenly sprinkle the cheese over top. Then, starting from the short end, tightly roll up the dough into a log. Turn the seam down, and use a sharp knife to slice the rolled log in half, leaving only 1-2” connected at one end. Turn the sliced halves so that the cut cross-sections are facing up, and cross them over each other, braiding loosely.

(It’ll be messy. It’ll still work.)

Place the braided dough into a greased 12x4” loaf pan, and bake at 350F for 50-60 minutes.

Here’s the result!

Good lord this was good. It’s pull-apart delicious, just the right amount of greasy and spicy and cheesy and crispy. You don’t just have to take my word for it, either.

You could ask Olaf.

(Thankfully, there were no ill effects from my big stupid boy eating the entire chunk seen on the right of this photo.)

Hey, speaking of my big stupid boy…

6) Allow me to introduce you to my friend, The Handsome Idiot.

Normally, when creating a cocktail for this newsletter, the ingredients come first.

I’ll hit upon some flavor combination I think might be good, tinker with it, perfect it, and then later come up with a name for it.

This week, that process took place in reverse.

The other night, I tweeted a photo of Olaf, my rowdy dog son, with a caption referring to him as a “handsome idiot”. This is factually true; he is both a dashing young fellow and a complete dolt. I can relate to both, of course.

The phrase stuck in my craw, though, and I realized that “Handsome Idiot” was the name of a cocktail I hadn’t created yet. A classic cocktail, something I could sidle up to a well-polished hotel bar in 1961 and order. “Gimme a Handsome Idiot,” I’d say, and the bartender would know exactly what I meant. “Right away, sir. Hey, what do you think of this space race?” “It’s a fad,” I’d say. “Never going to happen.”

Anyways, I wanted to keep the drink simple—only a few ingredients, nothing too difficult—and I wanted to work with things I already had on hand. I rolled a few potential combinations through my head, before I landed on one I thought might be a winner.

And, wouldn’t you know it? It was!

The Handsome Idiot

• 2 ounces rye whiskey

• 3/4 ounces Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao

• 1/4 teaspoon Fee Brothers Aztec Chocolate Bitters²

• Orange peel

• Matches

In a mixing glass, stir the rye whiskey, dry curaçao and chocolate bitters with ice. Add fresh ice to a rocks glass—preferably one large cube, if you’ve got the mold to make it—and strain the drink over the ice. Cut a small section of orange peel, and light a match. Hold the orange peel over the drink, peel side down, several inches over the match for a few seconds to heat it. Finally, pull the peel a little closer and squeeze—if you do it right, you’ll get a little poof of flame over the peel.

Drop the peel into the drink.

When you feature cocktails as regularly as I do—this is the 129th edition of the Friday Newsletter, and I reckon at least 120 of them have included a cocktail—it’s hard to revisit all of them. There are some that I make where I think “well, that was a fun experiment, but I probably don’t need to do it again.”

Then there are the ones that I know would go right onto the permanent cocktail menu if this newsletter were an actual brick-and-mortar bar. This is one of those; it’s an All-Star; balanced, smooth-drinking and subtly sweet.

It feels like it’s been around forever, and if you have the three main ingredients, it’s one you can make all winter long.

5) It ain’t much but it could be the start of something big

Today’s musical selection is brought you by reader @IvanKander, who I very much appreciate for pointing me in the direction of Durry, a band comprised of Minneapolis-area siblings Austin and Taryn Durry.

Quarantined together at the beginning of the pandemic, the brother-and-sister duo began recording songs together, and made waves on TikTok with their single “Who’s Laughing Now”, an absolute jam that’s perfect for a barroom singalong (if we were going to crowded bars) or belting in the car with the windows rolled down (if it weren’t 20 degrees outside.)

4) The best way to get kids to bed is to tell them about monsters

I’m going to throw a little curveball in my reading recommendations this week. Partly, this is because I need a little more time with the book I’m reading right now.

(It’s excellent, but I’m not done with it yet, and it’ll surely be next week’s selection.)

In the meantime, I’d like to share a recent find that’s been a big hit at Cookbook Family bedtime: The Book of Mythical Beasts and Magical Creatures.

I spotted this book at Barnes & Noble over the holidays, and realized it would be perfect for one of my most tried-and-true bedtime backup plans.

You see, invariably, a night will come along where I’ve let the kids watch TV or play on their tablets a little too long, and we’re running smack into bedtime without having had storytime yet. I don’t want to send them to bed without reading, but I also don’t want to spend 20 minutes reading a whole book. I’ve found colorful almanacs work great for this—things where I can say “okay, we’ll do three pages tonight, you each pick one and I’ll pick one.”

The Book of Mythical Beasts and Magical Creatures is an almanac of sorts—a collection of more than 60 folk legends about creatures from unicorns to faeries to dragons and chupacabras, with colorful illustrations and a page-long description of the origin and mythos behind each.

The authors did a nice job avoiding a bias toward Western mythology—there’s a nice cultural spread, from Europe to Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Does it sometimes backfire to read to a 5- and 6-year-old about monsters right before bedtime? Sure! But they love it anyways. Also, it’s a good way to keep them in line. “If you’re not asleep by 9pm, that’s when the Golem comes out!”

3) Let us bathe in the cleansing waters of Xennial nostalgia

I have to credit reader Amyh729 for being the first of several people to implore me to check out the Ringer/Spotify podcast 60 Songs That Explain The ‘90s, a thoroughly enjoyable and easily-consumable listen that’s up my alley in multiple ways.

In each episode, host Rob Harvilla and guests explore a single hit song from the greatest decade in music history. Each song is contextualized, given a backstory and examined musically in an entertaining and concise way. (I love podcasts that hold episodes to a half-hour or so. I don’t have a long commute.)

Also, Harvilla is from the Cleveland area just like me, so there’s plenty of relatable references for me, the protagonist of reality.

The project’s been running since October 2020 and has nearly hit the 60-song goal, featuring iconic tracks by artists from Alanis Morrissette to Tupac and Boyz II Men to Limp Bizkit.

2) NOW, THE SWEEPSTAKESES

Okay. Time to give some stuff away!

First, earlier this week, I made a proclamation, in celebration of my friends at Homefield Apparel finally launching their Cincinnati Bearcats line. (It’s great, and virtually everything I’ve worn outside of the office the last week has been from it.)

I announced that I would do random drawings for (2) $25 Homefield Apparel gift cards—one to be selected from existing paying subscribers, and one to be selected from anyone who signed up for a new paid subscription between last Friday and today.

I’ll be drawing for these this evening (around 8pm EST, give or take).

Short notice? Sure, but that means you should strike while the iron is hot.

If you’re interested, sign up here: Homefield Gift Card Drawing.

Next, the bigger drawing!

Periodically here over the last year-plus, I’ve done drawings for a rotating prize package I call The Action CookBox. It’s a jam-packed gift box full of things related to recommendations I’ve made in previous Friday newsletters, and the seven that I’ve done so far have been very well-received by their winners.

For this month’s selection, I’ve decided to stick to a close theme. You see, I often reference certain kitchen tools that I use frequently here, but you might not have those same tools in your kitchen. So for this month’s box, I’ve pulled together The Action Cookbook Starter Kit: a selection of some of my favorite kitchen gadgets, each somehow related to at least one recipe I’ve featured here. (Plus a few other things.)

It includes:

• Set of three Kitzini silicone baking mats, something I use very frequently in my baking/roasting, but especially useful for making the crispy cheese featured in these Carne Asada Tacos

• Set of four miniature loaf pans, great for making a miniature loaf of anything, but especially for making Personal Detroit Pizzas

• Set of two eighth baking sheets, perfect for small-scale roasting but also for plating of an individual serving of my Architecturally Perfect Ultimate Nachos

• A big ol’ meat hammer. That’s for the Kentuckiana Hot Loin. You already know.

• A bottle of Inner Beauty Hot Sauce, a fantastic habanero-based hot sauce but also a key ingredient in the recipe that inspired my Seventh Circle Pasta

• A Javelin Instant-Read Thermometer, the single kitchen tool I use the most and the one that’s been the most important to my cooking, especially useful for grilling things like soy-soda-and-garlic-marinated pork chops to perfection.

• The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide To Culinary Creativity by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen A. Page, one of my absolute favorite cooking texts. Instead of recipes, it offers an encyclopedic reference of ingredients and what flavors complement them best. It’s been a terrific resource for creating recipes, and with it, you can create your own ACBN-style recipes, eventually usurping and destroying me. (Please do not do this. But you could. It’s a good book.)

• Action Cookbook Sticker

• Action Cookbook Keychain

The total value of this month’s prize package is approximately $125, and it could be yours! For free! Eligibility for this drawing is open to all paying subscribers (existing or new). Booster-level supporters will have their chances doubled. Anyone can win!

I’ll draw this package next Friday, and you can enter to win this drawing HERE.

Finally, hey, let’s make one of these easy. I’ve got a fresh batch of 50 ACBN stickers (like the one in the top left corner of the CookBox image) to give away, first-come, first-served to paying subscribers. Request a sticker here, while supplies last.

Boy, that’s a lot of different incentives to become a paying subscriber today, isn’t it? Let me just drop a button here.

Who doesn’t love clicking a red button?

Now, on to the best part of every Friday newsletter.

1) An embarrassment of riches

Last week, I sent out an urgent plea: my pet-picture queue had run dry, and I might not be able to fill the most important slot in each Friday’s newsletter.

Send me more pet photos, I implored.

Well, you all stepped up, and now I’ve got as deep a queue as I’ve ever had. Owing to email sizes, I can’t usually fit more than three in each edition, so please—bear with me, as it’ll take a little while to share all of your submissions. Rest assured I am very grateful for them, I have enjoyed them all quite a bit myself, and they’re all good dogs and cats.

First up in this week’s collection, Chris S. shares a very good girl who’s more outdoorsy than many of us:

You’ve featured Daisy a couple of times, but here she is in Blowing Rock, NC this past weekend.

What a majestic vista for a majestic dog. Incredible picture, vibes off the chart. I love her and I would climb a mountain just to pet her.

Just not a big mountain. I like oxygen. Great dog.

Next up, Jessica K. shares two fantastically festive feline friends:

Here are some Christmas kitties for you!!

The orange one is Peanut Butter, a dumb perfect sweet baby of a cat who you can pick up and who loves everyone. They is why I could put her in this incredible sweater.

Then there is Jelly, who only loves my husband even after having her for over 8 years. She is beautiful and she knows it and is mean about it; a true Regina George.

They are littermates and sisters and I love them so much.

IT’S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME.

They are both adorable and I should not pick sides here but please tell Peanut Butter that I want to be her friend. Do it when Jelly isn’t listening. I’m not trying to make anyone jealous here, I just think Peanut Butter and I could hang out and wear sweaters together. Great cats.

Finally this week, Shane M. offers up a magnificent mutt:

My dog has been featured before but she’s very cute so here she is again. This is Polly, a mixed breed with  Pomeranian, Beagle, Russell Terrier, Chihuahua, Cattle Dog and about 8 more things in her. She’s currently adjusting to life with a baby in the house and she’s doing….great.

Look at the confidence here. This is not a dog who is threatened by the introduction of a baby to her household, because she knows she’s too cute to ever cede the spotlight. Her position is safe, and she knows how to accessorize. May we all be so confident and so fetching in a bandana. Great dog.

That’ll bring us to the end of the road for ACBN400; thanks for indulging me through yet another milestone, and for everything each of you bring to making this newsletter what it is.

Let’s do this another 400 times, why don’t we?

—Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)

1. not a guarantee

2. This is worth having a bottle of on hand, because it is an essential ingredient in the Jules Verne, one of the best cocktails ever featured on the ACBN and a heavy hitter this time of year.