What did I cook this weekend.....

I'm not turning my nose up at any paella (and I bet your wife's tastes AWESOME) but that one is a thing of beauty. LOVE the clams and other goodness contained therein!

 

My wife lived in Spain and came back with the taste for paella. She likes seafood and the lighter fare. And she's a dessert fiend. She makes a mean creme brulee.

I made noodles this weekend for tagliatelle bolognese. It was sooo good. The meat sauce I made was tasty - I couldn't keep my spoon out of it. The family was hovering around the kitchen before I finished, so no pictures of the final product. Here's the noodles though.

 

OK... I have to ask you where you got the cool pasta rack?

 

currently have 75 lbs of pork butt on my WSM 22 incher. Pics to come later!

 

Not sure. It was a gift. It has a nifty tool that lets you easily take the pasta as it's coming off the Kitchenaid cutter and then perfectly place those strands on the arms of the rack. I.e., I didn't put each noodle on there by hand; in fact, my hands never touched the noodles.

[edit] http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001423LFY/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

I set up a strata last night because I knew I would be busy,Leftover sourdough, peppers, onion,tomatoes,avocado,bacon,ricotta. Cleaned out the fridge.
Pop it in the oven, breakfast is served!

 

I have been buying a lot more Cuban bread lately since I bought a sandwich press. Been getting creative with the stale leftovers.



Today I made brunch Tampa style. French toast from day-old cuban bread with fried chicken marinated in a beer/sazon marinade then battered in breadcrumbs made from a week-old loaf. Couple strips of thick cut bacon from the meat market to round it out. Amazing.

 

Saturday I grilled up some boneless, skinless chicken breasts. They were marinated about 12 hrs in a sweet/spicy mango/pineapple/bbq mix I thought up. Combination of direct & indirect heat on a charcoal grill. Brushed with dark sesame oil after the initial sear. They turned out juicy & delicious, served with brussels sprouts sauteed in butter with vidalia onion, and ginger glazed baby carrots. Washed it all down with ice cold lemonade.
Regards, GF.

 

Making some eggs bennie for brunch. Hoping my sauce don't break...

 

Sauce didn't break...

 

Doing a standing rib roast for Easter dinner; it just went in the oven.

I used a mortar and pestle to make a paste of fresh rosemary, garlic, cayenne pepper, roasted Spanish paprika, sea salt, black pepper and olive oil, and smeared it over the roast. Then I placed it on top of carrots, onions, mushrooms and celery tossed with more olive oil, and set it to brown at 425* for half an hour. After that I'll turn the oven down to 325*, and finish cooking it....

 

Been working crazy hours, and this is the first weekend I've had off in a while so to celebrate, I made one of my favorite summertime meals: carne asada and vegetable tacos (grilled pineapple, charred corn, black beans, tomatos, grilled peppers, caramelized onions. roasted garlic, and seared cabbage) with a green sauce (cliantro, lime, vinegar and sugar), mango salsa, and home made flour tortillas.

Nothing quite like being in the kitchen all afternoon

 

Smoked up a 15 lb turkey yesterday. Had a hell of a time doing so as well. Turns out I really do not like the natural lump charcoal much as I can't seem to get the smoker up above 270 using it. My food probe was reading all over the place (it was reading at 90 some degrees when I first put the turkey over the coals. When I was putting the turkey on, my dumb a** stepped barefoot on a coal that spilled on the ground and I burned the pad of the bottom of my foot. Thankfully I have hobbit feet so it didnt turn out to be too bad of a burn, just melted skin. When I went out to mess with it again later I stepped on another coal I missed and burned the tip of my toe. Just like with brewing, things may go wrong, but the final product is what really matters. I let things fly and kept an eye on everything. Turkey cooked faster than usual, and with the help of my backup thermometer, managed to pull it off the smoker in time. It was a definite success aside from the problems.

 

OW, DJ! That sounds like a painful smoking experience all the way around - glad the end result was good.

I did rack of lamb. I coat it with a Dijon/olive oil mixture, with rosemary, garlic, freshly-ground pepper - then dredge it in a mixture of pecan meal and Parm cheese, also more garlic/black pepper. It was oven-roasted to 130* and then let stand about 15 minutes - perfect rareness and the crust sets so nice! Also made ovenroasted root veggies - sweet potato, parsnips, rutabaga, and onion, and steamed asparagus with lemon mayo, and strawberry shortcakes for dessert. All that for three of us. Not much left either.

Wish I'd thought to take a picture - it was definitely picture-worthy on the plates. Too anxious to sink my teeth into it!

 

What did I cook? Brisket!

 

Did some big thick pork chops on the grill - I soaked them in a simple brine and then dosed them with - get this - Polish sausage seasoning. That probably would have been good, but then I got the bright idea to add some dry oak to the coals to get some smoke flavor into the meat. Well, I got a tad too much smoke. In the end it was good, but next time I'll skip the smoke.

I also grilled some sweet potato fries to go with that and SWMBO made this really nice dish that is cooked cauliflower pulsed a few times in the Cuisinart so it has the consistency of couscous and then mixed with cumin, cinnamon, craisins, and almonds. Really tasty.

 

Wow, that looks awesome!!

 

50 traditional Chilean empanadas from scratch! Lotta work. Sooo worth it!


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It came out good; even the wife was impressed. Of course, it helps to start with a good piece of meat to begin with.... I only had to take out a 2nd mortgage on one of our houses to afford it. j/k; Stater Bros. had it on sale for $5.99/lb.

I served the sliced roast with the veggies from the pan; a pre-fab garden salad with cucumber and tomato added; lumpy mashed potatoes with sauteed chopped mushrooms and garlic in them and a layer of broiled cheese on top; a cucumber and onion salad (sliced cucumber, sliced sweet onion and red wine vinegar); and gravy made from the pan juices. And hard rolls with butter, of course....

The gravy was good, but the carrots added a little odd sweetness. I'll either cut back on them next time, or balance them out by using a drier wine than the red zinfandel I used this time.

 

Any chance of getting your wife to provide a recipe for that? It sounds like nothing I've ever had before, but it sounds good.

 

Love empanadas. Years ago I had a book with a recipe for them, and made it a few times. The only thing I really remember about it was that it included chopped raisins...

 

Sounds like picadillo - great as a filling in empanadas, peppers, potato balls or just about anything...

 

Split pea soup with the hambone from Easter dinner. Added one bottle of my partigyle porter as part of the liquid. Smells fantastic...



Dinner tomorrow! :rockin:

 

These were simply beef, an olive, and a piece of hard boiled egg in each. Little pico de gallo and/or hot sauce and good to go!

I've tried experimenting in the past.... seafood filled, chorizo/pork filled, etc... but SWMBO prefers the traditional way. I need to start saving a few shells and make a small batch of experimental empanadas for myself each time. Takes so damn long to make from start to finish that I only get around to making these once or twice a year.

 

Yeah, it's definitely something you need to carve out some time for. Once I got rolling on a batch of mine, I usually doubled the dough and made some cherry turnovers while I was at it. Store-bought cherry pie filling, and dust the crusts with sugar....

 

I think if you Google "fouscous" you'll get what you're after. Here's one link that looks like what we had.

http://itspaleo.com/recipe/free-recipe/vegetables/-cauliflower-fouscous-pilaf/604/index.html

 

I'm not much of a baker, but this seems like something I could nail. I'll have to give it a shot next time. Thanks for the idea.

To break up the time frame of making these and because I like the added marinating time, I cook the filling the night before and pop it in the fridge over night. I make the dough the following day and go work work rolling balls, rolling out shells, filling, folding, brushing, baking.......... on and on and on...... but again, the end result is very much worth it. The wife helps out on the assembly line and we both have a few drinks in the process. The bottom of my recipe actually says "MUST DRINK WINE WHILE PREPARING". I edited it to include beer.

 

I've got a 3 pound bologna in the steamer right now. I do it in a loaf pan - makes it bread-shaped when it comes out and gets sliced!

This one was made with pepper beer instead of water, and then some pimiento-stuffed green olives lined up end to end in layers 1 and 2. Can't wait to try it.

 

You keep tempting but post no pictures, come on and give it up

 

It never occurred to me to roll up balls, then roll them out. I just rolled the dough out flat, and used a coffee can like an over-sized biscuit cutter. Then I added a couple spoonfuls of filling, wetted the edges and pressed them together with a fork - like a pie crust.

Of course, they didn't look nearly as traditional and interesting as yours... they looked more like little Hostess fruit pies.

 

Ha ha! OK, when I slice the bologna tomorrow I'll take a pic, I promise!

 

Grilled some nice Atlantic salmon fillets tonight and learned a trick in the process.

Normally when I grill, I will heat up the oven to 150 and I put a piece of Wilton-Armetale in there and heat it up. That way, if one thing is done before others, I can take it off the grill and keep it warm until everything else is ready. Plus, unless I'm doing really rare beef or rare tuna, etc., nothing is going to get overdone being in a 150 deg. oven.

Anyway, I put the salmon fillets, scales down, over direct heat with coals at a medium burn. Using the Thermapen, I found that the lower half or so of the fillets were getting to that 140 range, but the tops were still pretty rare and pretty pink. I don't like to turn salmon and put the bare meat against the grill grate if I can avoid it, so I got the idea that - why don't I just grab the warm Armetale and turn the fillets over onto that, and put it in the oven? That way, the top will gently warm up to that 140-150 range and not go too far. Well, it worked out perfectly and we had some salmon that was just right all the way through.

Served that with some grilled sweet potato wedges (which got a liberal dose of nutmeg, salt and pepper), some quinoa, and some gently wilted spinach. 'Twas a hit.

 

Here is the pimiento-olive-stuffed bologna. There were a few air pockets, due to packing it into the loaf pan in thirds. Next time I think I'll dry the olives on paper towels before putting into the loaf too - they might stick to the meat better that way.

Taste is really good though!

 

This is the first one I did, sans olives, two months ago.

 

I love olive loaf!

 

Me too - next up - pistachio loaf. Then maybe white peppercorn loaf, or sweet gherkin loaf!

At least it's not "mystery meat" - I know exactly what went into it. Good homeground pork shoulder and homeground beef.

 

Actually, I just love olives. I've done a bit of research and found that an olive tree will grow great in FL, except (ironically enough) I don't have enough sun on my property... too many trees.

 

Same here, we're too shaded for a lot of things.

I think olives take a lot of steps to make them edible though, right?

 

Yea, they get a soak in lye I think. Not sure about the rest, but that part caught my eye because I already have the lye (for pretzels).

 

I just made some ham and potato soup. Left over ham from easter and some boxed scalloped potatoes. So easy, and i actually had everything already. Came out real good too.

Ingredients

4-6 servings
5 cups hot water
1 box (4.7 oz) Betty Crocker® Scalloped potatoes
½ teaspoon salt
2/3 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cups cubed cooked ham
4 cups whole milk

*shredded cheese for garnish (optional)

Directions

Heat water and potatoes and salt to boiling in large saucepan. Boil for 20 minutes. Drain. Return to heat.
Stir in all remaining ingredients, *including seasoning packed from the boxed potatoes. Heat to boiling over medium-high heat, stirring periodically.
Reduce heat and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally. (Approximately 10-15 minutes). Top with shredded cheese before serving if desired.