What did I cook this weekend.....

Just a thought here, but have you considered fresh mustard greens or fresh turnip greens instead of spinach? Both have a nice bit of "zing" in their flavor & might be just the ticket.
Regards, GF.

 

I have not until now. Thanks for the thought, I´ll see if I can get them here. =)

 

Barbequed some fresh Hungarian & garlic sausage yesterday. Also made long grain rice with black beans, lentils, garlic & seasonings. Darn bbq chips wer everywhere!

 

So this weekend I made a beautiful Apple pie (BigJohn took a chunk out of it before the picture), Apple butter (it's still cooking), burgers, and oven fries.
I also made a seafood alfredo with lobster, shrimp, and scallops that was divine. First I lightly steamed the lobster until partially cooked and then shucked it and cooked the shells in heavy cream. Oh my it was really good.

 

Just because you have garden of jalepenos, bell peppers, and habeneros in the garden, and then also because you decided to roast them all over hard wood charcoal making them smell amazing...

...just because, you shouldn't just throw them all in your spicey sausage italian spaghetti sauce...

....whew. Tastes good..for a while. The pain lasts a while after the plate of food though. LOL. <sniffle, sniffle, sniff>

 

Cut into the marbled pound cake...ta daaaaaa!

 

Beautiful cake, Matt!

It got up to 98* here today. AND at the CA coast, we don't have AC - so few days of the year where it's needed.

So dinner tonight was - TA DA! A Carl's Jr. El Diablo burger, with homemade BBQ chips and a Red Hook clone ale.

 

That just looks great Matt!

 

I'm doing leftovers tonight, and probably not cooking anything significant till next week. Stepson is getting married Sunday so things are just nuts getting ready for the events and getting ready for family coming in for the wedding that will be staying with us. Maybe can cook something cool for the family while they are here but don't really know everybody's plans yet. We will see.

 

I completely failed my apple butter exam... my crockpot runs way too hot and i burned it!

 

Gonna try to bbq more sausage later, if it doesn't rain. Got plenty of that big pan of rice in the fridge. Gonna add diced stewed tomatoes & some more seasonings to it.

 

A trial runoff of my tarts was on the menue as I made a big load of refried beans to sustain me in burito form during the upcoming hardcore student welcoming days. I remained with the pastry base and then added the refried beans and yolk topped with cheese as usual. Good stuff (and potentially a bloody effective snack I recon), and I learned more.

90% till recipe release is just getting the timing on the yolk now and balancing it with the browning of the cheese.

Also looking to do a good bit of beer and cheese pairing during the weekend during an event where everybody just drinks sh+t and eats junkfood. Counterculture?^^

 

Last night I made a basil goat cheese and roasted red pepper stuffed pork loin. Topped it off with a cherry pinot noir balsamic sauce, and paired with some parmesan spaghetti squash. It was delicious. So much so....no pics.

 

I like that burger for a fast food burger.

 

Just made a batch of tabbouleh. Man I love this stuff. It's better the next day, but I just had to take a pic. I'm gobbling it out of the bowl. Anyone else make tabbouleh?

 

Haven't in a while, good stuff

 

Tonight, I made a staple - "pork chop casserole", even though it's technically not a casserole.

Take thick-cut pork chops from the sirloin end (the end with part "dark meat") and brown them quickly. Place them in a casserole dish, and add sliced onions, potato wedges, and thin-cut carrots. Season with salt & pepper at the least (thyme, rosemary, and other herbs can be added to your taste) and 3-6 Tablespoons of butter, then bake until vegetables are done. Make sure carrots are smaller than potato wedges to make sure they get done. I usually bake at 350-400° F for about an hour, stirring at 30 minutes to make sure the vegetables have contact with the casserole pan to promote browning.

If you use thin-cut chops, they come out very dry. Thick-cut chops stay moist & absorb lots of juice from the vegetables (more of the onion than anything, which is divine).

 

That one really deserved a picture! It sounds fantastic!

 

I crave the damn things! LOL!

This one was so thick I could barely get my mouth around it. MMMMMMMMMMMM.

 

That is such a bummer!!

The dang crockpots run so hot now, even on the lowest setting. I've learned to use my sous vide controller to keep it where I want it. Only works if the crockpot isn't digital though.

 

Got back from a trip to Fort Peck Lake in eastern Mt. about a week ago.We fished up at the dam the last day there . Wow.Great salmon fishing that day. Now I have ten lbs of chinook fillets .Lox and smoked salmon spread in my near future !:rockin:

 

Made some hamburgers tonight, 80/20 mix of ground beef. I had one regular burger (one 4-oz patty) and one "double with cheese", consisting of two 2-oz patties with one slice of cheese in the middle. It was so much better than any regular single-patty cheeseburger, even though it was the same amount of meat.

That extra burger's worth of char was what did it. No, the hamburgers don't stay medium rare, but on a somewhat sloppy burger, it doesn't matter much. Heck, the cheese alone is enough moisture to make up for whatever was lost in cooking.

 

We actually have a Carl's Jr near here. I will have to give it a try!

 

OK, but be forewarned - you too may suffer from El Diablo fixation after trying it.

If you like a good spicy burger, it does the trick. Jalapenos, pepper cheese, spicy sauce, and pepper poppers. Yum.

 

Potato pancakes

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Just finishing up 10 quarts of homemade BBQ potato chips.

Dinner is gonna be easy - Frito pie. Homebrewed beer.

 

Bacon wrapped rotisserie chicken breast.

 

Couple of sirloins tonight. The missus and I having steak and salads while watching SEC football. Sorry, no plated pics, but I can assure you mine was demolished in dog time. BTW, in the foggy foreground is a homebrew smokebeer.

 

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1442110349.334772.jpg
Prime sirloin, potatoes and brocc. Simple but really good. Cow was outstanding.

 

No shame in simple:rockin:

 

Sounds right up my alley!

 

"Simple" ly awesome

 

Gonna be grilling a chicken this afternoon for dinner. Glaze is made up of orange juice, tomato paste, and some other stuff I can't recall right now. Still deciding on whether or not to clean up the charcoal grill, or just use the gas... either way, I'll try to remember to take pics.

 

My wife marinaded a bunch of huge, roaster-size chicken drumsticks in this Filipino-style sauce my son makes at his other job. Dark, sweet & savory after marinating all day in the fridge. Roasted in the oven, since it rained all afternoon while I brewed & she cooked. Some mixed veggies & an IPA...:rockin: Even the skin was tasty...

 

I love Filipino food, lumpia is the bomb

 

Just cookin up some gumbo, took a cooking class in NOLA. We seem to make it monthly now.

 

Did not really cook anything exiting, but had some beer and fancy cheese pairing. Oh my, was it ever glorious. It was at this student thing where everyone just eats and drinks junk, and me and two mates said let´s go against the grain. Did not manage to capture it properly on camera though.
However, it was glorious delicious fun to see how the cheeses and beers interacted. In there were some local IPAs (including Amager´s Wookiee IPA), up to Great Divides Yeti. Among the cheeses were Spanish blue cheese, 3y old Parmigiano-Reggiano, Gran Pecurino, French Goatcheese with truffles, apple-wood smoked cheddar, and more. And good sourdough with it all.

Parmigiano-Reggiano with barley wine was a true winner, just as it paired bloody well with the extremely fresh dill heavy Wookiee IPA. Everyone loved the apple-wood smoked cheddar, and the spanish blue was especially fantastic with Yeti though also awesome with IPA.

Generally there were a lot of orgasm faces around for an hour. I just want to eat cheese all day every day. I´d never get tired of the variety.

 

Atomic Buffalo Turds (lil smokie / cream cheese / jalapeno / wrapped in bacon / BBQ sauced). Smoked them over a little apple wood. I had them ready for the Federer/Joker match, but it got rained out, so I et them while watching the TB Bucs get schooled by the QB they should have drafted. Ugh.

 

OK, pics for proof:









I left it in the pan a little too long, everything ended up cooked right (breast meat at 155, dark meat at 165) but the skin on the thighs never did brown up or crisp any. I had a beautiful platter set up of the chicken all broken down, but I forgot to snap a shot of it. Still have half the chicken left for later.

The sauce was nothing more than 1/2 cup each of tomato paste, orange juice, and red wine vinegar, with a teaspoon of cayenne. I would substitute 1/4 C ketchup for half the tomato paste, and add salt & pepper. Maybe a little more orange juice to thin it out.

It was pretty tasty! Took 1-1/2 hours at 300° on my gas grill.

 

Not much creative cookery at my house today...just managed to make a quick guacamole. Two small avocados, salt, pepper, a spritz of lime juice, a tablespoon of sour cream (to lighten it up a bit).