Another mouthful.

And my feeble attempt at a garnish is a wilted piece of flat-leaf parsley. Maybe next time I’ll wait for my lights to be set before adding the garnish to a hot dish. I apologize for that. But the pic may not look it, but the dish was screaming!

I got the idea from watching Jamie Oliver on his Saturday morning show. I’ve always liked Jamie Oliver. I can dig his rustic approach. And his garden, or small farm, has me exponentially envious. In this episode he showcased leeks. And well, we like leeks.

Jamie’s dish was a simple one with slow pan-roasted leeks covered in prosciutto with homemade pappardelle. So let’s see, we’ve got homemade pasta, sauteed leeks, and pork. So I decided to put my spin on it.

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Good to be back blogging.

It isn’t that I haven’t wanted to post something interesting, thought provoking, and/or intriguing for you all to read; not that at all. I realized that sometimes I just cannot bring myself to sit in front of my PC for much longer than a quick email check, a quick headline, or a quick browse of y’all’s blogs. You see, I sit in front of a PC everyday, and sometimes, the work gets to be just tiring enough that I don’t want to type anymore. It’s kinda like that commonplace story of working in an ice cream factory so long that you hate ice cream except that in my case it’s actually true. Who can ever hate ice cream?

Now that the weather here is finally equalizing with the actual season, I have been looking for inspiring dishes. Mostly this time of year, through the winter, I like to make comfort food type dishes; things that “stick to yer ribs.”

Well, if it isn’t already evident by my postings that I am a seafood lover, I’ll shout it out now. I guess that doesn’t really matter because I am truly a food lover and I don’t tend to discriminate…well not too much. I especially love the bivalves; scallops, clams, mussels, give them to me in excess!!!

Except…if I overindulge even a little bit, I get slammed with the “king’s disease", gout. And friends, that ain’t pretty. Nothing like being cursed over something you love.

Oyster stew is something that I have wanted to make for some time now and with the cooler weather I thought it was fitting. I am not much of a shucker. I mean I can and I have. I would rather not though. For those who like to shuck, shuck on. I’ll be over here.

Thanks to Whole Paychex, I can buy relatively fresh oysters already shucked. They ain’t cheap though, but then again, neither am I. They are like $12 for a pint. I used 2 for this dish.

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Oh how I love the mud bugs. I want them fried with a rémoulade, fried on a fully dressed po-boy, suspended in a seafood risotto, pasta alfredo, boiled up, or even carefully placed in crawfish bread. I love the mudbugs.

You know, growing up in Philadelphia, as a youth, me and my boys used to play around in the creeks. We’d step from rock to rock carefully navigating our way from place to place. And anything “nature” piqued our curiosity especially the lobster looking-like creatures we’d find under rocks. I never thought about eating them though. See these things we found, you know, up north, were crayfish!



Not crawfish like what people eat in Louisiana…

These couldn’t be the same crustaceans could they?

And what of these crawdads?

I’ve already had a similar conversation with my wife about butter beans and lima beans. She claims that butter beans taste better than lima beans. Um, okay, but honey, butter beans ARE lima beans! Nope, she maintains, butter beans taste different and better (more on this later). Well, in that same vein I continue and proclaim, crawfish=crayfish=crawdad. It really depends on where you live what you call them.

One thing is for sure, I call them tasty.

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I have a ton of recipes that I want to make that I get from my monthly rags. This one just jumped the entire pile and was made right after viewing it.

Granted the title or name of the cake is a mouthful, but I assure you, it is a sweet, moist mouthful of ginger, pumkin-y, pineapple goodness!

Normally it is the wife who is the baker, but this cake was a team effort. I picked up some chocolate so I could make this cake from Claudia, but it had to wait.

We’ll do the chocolate this weekend.

Make this!

Nothing is more trite that football season accompanied by beer and wings. So what? In my opinion, this is a good thing. Well, it’s a good thing as long as you can get some good wings because sometimes the football isn’t so good.

Now the sad thing about this whole ordeal is that you really do have to make your own wings if you want your wings to be the best tasting, per your specified degree of hotness, and sadly the right size. We have gone to wing places where this is supposed to be their specialty and been very disappointed. I’ve had them ranging from under-fried to petrified and undercooked and much like a dog’s chew toy. And even when we may luck out and get some decent wings, lately they have tended to look much like pigeon wings rather than chicken wings. And don’t let it be all-you-can-eat because the second plate usually tastes like a subtle attempt to tell you that you need to stop ordering.

No, for me, it’s head to Whole Paychex, buy up the wings, bring them home and dismember them like your local butcher Sam.

The wings then get a nice relaxing, rejuvenating, buttermilk bath, for about an hour, maybe more. Then it’s off to the seasoned flour for a dip and a shake, with another rest for another hour.

Off to the 375 degree-f deep fryer in batches. Then into a waiting 325 degree-f oven to make sure there is no blood.

Now the sauce! Buttery, fiery, sauce.

To the plate before being devoured.

This recipe will make wings crispy enough to stand up to the sauce and still have good texture. I have, on several occasions, made these and taken them to a party for reheat. They were the star or the party.

Wow! I have been on somewhat of a hiatus as some of you may have noticed. This wasn’t by choice and believe me, I was not enjoying myself. Every once in a while, it really hits the fan, you know what I mean? A perfect storm! Well, it wasn’t really all that bad. A deadline for a release was pushed up significantly at work. That was pretty intense. One guy was on vacation only to return and find out that all his work was two weeks late! Then I get to my day off last week, all set to relax, catch up with the blogosphere and my blog, and I get sick. Why do I have to get sick on my off day? I was laid up for the entire weekend. One should get sick during the work week. I mean, isn’t that what sick days are for? Such the under used perk.

So now I have a small back log of stuff I want to share with you; those of you who are still visiting me and realize that I haven’t completely dropped off the face of the earth. One of those things in my cache is this wonderful hunk of pig belly. I realize that I am late to the party when it comes to the belly, but I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical about working in such unknown territory.



For the past few months or so, I have been drooling over posts all throughout the blogosphere sporting braised belly, fresh, home cured bacon, and even breaded and deep fried belly!

So I clicked my way to Niman Ranch. Extracted the credit card and ordered the monstrosity pictured above. Let me tell you, that came from a very large pig. Not quite a sow, but a large pig nonetheless. I just recently noticed changes at Niman Ranch and pork belly no longer seems to be offered. Oh well, there are other places online and from what I understand, local Asian markets will carry it as well. Not necessarily in that huge whole cut, but that is probably a good thing. Luckily I have a decent sized freezer.

I wondered… is home cured bacon really that much better than store bought premium bacon? I was bound to find out. Not to mention, I just like making stuff, you know? I get some quirky, probably misguided, sense of accomplishment from making my own stuff. Maybe I’ll try moonshine next. In any case… I assembled the necessary curing paraphernalia that I found online and was directed to by Ruhlman, et al, in Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. The instructions are clear, concise, and unbelievably simple. I prepped my cure.

I then took, believe it or not, only 1/3 of that belly to prepare for curing.

For this, I didn’t think to do anything really fancy, so I prepped two cures, one for cracked pepper and the other for maple.

Into the fridge the baggies went for their 7 day slumber. Every other day, I would turn the baggies. It was really that simple. I did have some issues with the cracked pepper bacon getting crisp before burning. Nothing that a quick blanch didn’t fix, but the maple turned out to be out favorite. I used the peppered bacon in applications as lardons, blanched first and that turned out to be a win.

Stay tuned for more of my belly adventures. Hell, I have like a gazillion pounds of it left!

In the cupboard are the sweet potatoes. I need a side dish. So is it baked sweet potatoes? Nah, how about sweet potato souffle, you know with pineapple? Nope. Like a presidential candidate, I just floundered trying to come up with a side dish using these potatoes.

This is why Al Gore gave us the Interweb, right? So I Google. Lotsa hits! Wow I figure. Gotta be something creative in this result set. And there was. As a matter of fact, I moused on over to Heidi’s 101 Cookbooks for this recipe.

This delicious side dish needed no alterations from its original form. I tell you, with the citrus, the vanilla, and the cream, I thought I was eating pie! I did add a little nutmeg just because I felt like grating. I really think that cinnamon would be a welcomed addition here as well.

So, if you have sweet potatoes and you want to go against the fray, the trite, the cliche, make this. Chances are, you’ve got everything you need right there in your pantry.

On another note…

I am participating in the Adopt-a-Blogger event put on by Kristen over at Dine and Dish. If you’ve not heard about this yet, it is an event where experienced bloggers; meaning those veteran bloggers, having been blogging for a year or more (note: I don’t meet that qualification) are paired up with a blogging n00b. Basically, it is a mentoring program and boy do I wish that I had had a mentor when starting out!

I want you to take some time and visit my adopted blogger Abby over at Manger La Ville. She is just getting started and by the looks of her blog, she will be a pro in no time. You know how you can just read the passion in someone? Well, I think she’s got it.

After really enjoying the grilled lamb, I had a quite a bit of the tzatziki sauce left. I had used it for potato salad and to top the lamb, but I was out of ideas. So I’m thinking, gyros? Wasn’t in the mood for them. See that’s the thing, I am not the most creative cook in the kitchen. Coming up with ideas generates quite a bit of brain smoke. I wish I could be more like you guys with your clever dishes.

So off to Whole Paychex to get something to eat. I wandered around pondering the steaks, the chops, the sausages, the shrimp, (or skrimps if your from Georgia), and I spotted a really fresh looking specimen of coho salmon. Whenever I can get Sockeye or coho salmon, I snatch it up. I stopped buying the farm-raised salmon several years ago. My local market only sells some breed of salmon that is so good, they feel the need to, not only, “enhance” the color of the fish, but to actually inform you of their methods to bring you such “enhanced” fish. Wasn’t Barry Bonds “enhanced"?

Anyways…

Now I actually have developed a preference for wild salmon, particularly King, Sockeye, and coho. It could be my imagination, but they seem to have more fat, flavor, and color than the salmon sold at Sam’s club. I think they have more bones too. I always have to remove bones from the wild caught group.

So I decided to prepare this fillet in one of my favorite applications for fish, smoking. No not smoking in my pit, but in the trusty stove-top smoker.
A scoop of alder and one cherry dust into the bottom of the smoker and we’re ready to go. I topped the fish with dried rosemary, salt, pepper, and some good french butter with sea salt.



Pop the lid onto the smoker at the first whisp of smoke, set the timer for 20 minutes, pour another glass of wine, and set a spell.

Ding!

I didn’t use any citrus this day because I was firmly convinced that the tzatziki sauce would be a fine pairing with the subtle smokiness of the fish. And you know what? It was.

Some of you may have read my rant several posts ago about the kind of pork we see in the mega marts. They showcase really lean cuts of pork with virtually no marbling sealed up in Cryovac packages, swimming in an “enhancing” solution of water, salt and sodium phosphates. As a matter of fact, I was at my local market just last week and I ended up buying one of these packages. I went to begin brining the tenderloin and I noticed that there was an “ingredients” text block on the package. So, no brining. I was disappointed because I like to brine myself, but the loin came out pretty tasty on the rotisserie (more on that later). Well these chops were all natural. I got them along with some other goodies from Niman Ranch.

Last month, I was fortunate to receive a pretty decent bonus. So, before my wife got all of my our bonus money, I went out and treated myself to a new toy.



Now anyone who reads my blog, knows that I love barbecue and I love grilling. But, sometimes, I just want to come home and throw a couple of brats on the grill, top them with sauerkraut, and call it dinner. Building a hot coal fire for such a small amount of food, to me, can be both a waste of fuel and effort. So I bought that beauty for the convenience. I also got the rotisserie rig for it too. Don’t get me wrong, I am still true to my smoker and I love the way wood makes food taste, but a good grill flavor can be had on a gas grill with controlled flare-ups and a nice char.

So now my deck cooking space is almost complete. I will be adding a pellet smoker for cold smoking. Can you see homemade smoked bacon in my future? Maybe some smoked sausages! Yes…YES!!!

So for the first meal on this Cadillac of a grill I chose two really well marbled rib chops. I brined them in a quick solution of salt, sugar, rosemary, thyme, white, black, and red peppercorns.

For a side dish, I had to figure out a way to get quinoa, the super grain, into the mix. I was wandering the local Whole Paychex, as I often do, and I found this red quinoa.



I didn’t notice much of a flavor difference in the red quinoa versus the blanco, but I did notice that the texture was somewhat different. The grains didn’t adhere to each other as much; in fact they remained mostly separate. This was was actually good, since I was making a kind of pilaf.

To the quinoa, I added, chopped red onion, smoked mozzarella, fresh lady peas, and quartered cherry tomatoes. And this was good.



After the chops were brined, 3 hours, I patted them dry, cracked some pepper on them and tossed them on my new grill. I took care to get the aesthetically pleasing grill marks. While they were grilling, I whipped up the garlic lime sauce.

No words were spoken while we ate.

I have to say, that I love my new grill. It gets very, I mean very hot. I turned it on high to preheat it and it got up over 600 degrees-f! I’m thinking pizza on this baby sometime soon.

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