It’s been six months to the day since my last post. I went on the small hiatus I think because I had just burnt out a bit from blogging. I love to cook and I am passionate about it enough that I blog about food, but I just lost a little something along the way that just zapped the passion for writing. Well it is, and I am, back. I paid for another year of hosting so I am damn well gonna create content; I hope you don’t mind. In fact, I hope you join me for another year of cooking, conversation, and outright deliciousness!

Oh by the way, this is my one hundredth post. AND my blog was two years old on the 2nd of this month. I had no idea when I started this blog that I would get this far. Wow!

Well, I didn’t want my come-back post to be mundane or banal in any way so I adapted a dish from a recipe I saw in last November’s issue of Gourmet (I’ll miss them). This recipe haunted me for months pleading with me to make it a manifestation and now that I have made it, I am glad that I let the idea live in my head rent free.

I know from some of the comments that I have received on other veal posts that a lot of y’all don’t eat veal. Not because you don’t like it or it isn’t readily available, just that you haven’t put it into your repertoire. This is a good starting place to get veal into your rotation.

Thinking of this as veal “burgers” is, I think, a bit off base. The veal is much more delicate than it’s more adult beef and the addition of dill made each bite more like that of a veal “cake” instead of a patty.

I am always on the hunt for recipes for eggplant. Normally I just de-moisturize, Panko crust, then deep fry my eggplant finishing it with Parmesan shavings. This eggplant recipe was clever, quick, and delicious. It was akin to a quick and dirty ratatouille and it didn’t disappoint even on day two (and three).

This is an excellent weeknight recipe that takes about 30-40 minutes to put together. So for you veal lovers and for you veal-challenged foodies, give this a shot, you won’t be sorry.

Recipe after the jump.

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So I’m browsing my links and I come across Robin’s cowboy steak post and I think to myself, hmmmm, I have to have that NOW. So let it be written, so let it be done. And it was done, medium rare.

I started with a grass fed, well marbled, bone-in ribeye. Ain’t she perty?



That’s 41 ounces of beautiful beef there readers; 2.62 pounds! The application for this is really simple. And since I know that my pix and Robin’s pix (you did go there and read her blog post didn’t you?) I’ll wait….

Since I know that my pix and Robin’s pix are making your mouth water, you need to know that you can do this. You can. If I did, then you need to.

First and foremost, get a great piece of meat. You don’t need prime or Kobe, unless that’s how you roll. A good grass-fed locally raised cut will do you just fine. The cowboy steak is basically a small rib roast. It really isn’t that pricey either. At $11.99 per pound it is rather cheap compared to taking your broke ass out to a restaurant. Or maybe I mean, MY broke ass.

Okay, again, no recipes here, just technique. Fire up the grill. For me this time I used lump charcoal and mesquite wood. I love the taste of mesquite in beef. If you only have a small Walmart crappy grill, I’m sorry, I can’t help you. Well, maybe not, read on.

Fire the grill up to HOT. I mean like the devil is at home hot…hold your hand over it for 2 seconds only hot…HOT! I like lump charcoal and not briquettes for this application. No worries about fillers and it burns really, really hot. Let the steak sit at room temperature for an hour. Salt and pepper it, of course. Then, onto the hot grill.

Sear both sides, about 8 minutes each.

Then park the steak off of the direct heat to finish cooking. Meanwhile, I got the corn and poblanos going on the gas grill.

I haven’t a clue where I got the idea for the corn and poblano combination. I needed to use the peppers before they went bad, so hence, the poblano buttered corn. It’s another easy dish as well. Grill the corn until tender and slightly charred, then de-cobb it. Grill the peppers until they are charred, then remove the skin. Finely dice the peppers, add to the corn in a bowl, and toss it all with a stick, that’s right a stick, of softened butter. You can see the tasting fork in the photo below. That always seems to be sticking itself into something.

Of course, since there is steak involved, there has to be potatoes. These were quartered, tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. Then they were roasted in a 400 degree-f oven, covered with foil for 45 minutes. Then I continued roasting, uncovered for another 20, until crispy.

So head out, right now, to you friendly neighborhood meat man and get you a cowboy steak. Use either my or Robin’s application, or hell, make up your own. One thing though, this is a treat and I command you to DO IT!

Bear with me, I’ll get to the scallops in a minute…

So…I’ve been on somewhat of a hiatus. Oh the things I have seen and eaten…well, actually seen plenty, but eaten, nothing really eventful. I just wanted to be dramatic. I did manage to squeeze in a really nice vacation. Nothing too fancy, like actually buying an island and building his and her bungalows. No, I grabbed the wife by the hair and drug her to the Domincan; Punta Cana.



The flight from Atlanta was smooth, but the landing in Punta Cana was extremely choppy. I was ready to grab a sack, hook a line, stand in the door, and leap to the island. That would have been a smoother landing.

The airport was cool though. It is a series of open-air terminals with palm frond covered roofs. I remember thinking, wow, the airport is a bunch of big huts! There there giant ceiling fans twirling above us providing much needed cool air. At first I thought there was a natural breeze, then I looked up and saw these big ass fans. In the center of each fan was a manufacturer label which read, “Big Ass Fan Company". I am serious!

The above picture is after we deplaned and went through their particular flavor of customs and admittance. They walked us, first grade fire-drill style, to these stations where local agents ask questions and tourists stand perplexed because they either don’t speak Spanish or cannot understand due to the pace at which the agent speaks. One bizarre station was the $10 ticket for nothing station. They walk us to this station where a dude is holding a wad of US currency in his hand. He asks me, “one or two?", “dos", I reply, “twenty US please.” Okay. So I peel off a twenty for the guy. He hands me two tickets. He then gestures for us to move to the next station. We start toward another windowed booth…"NOT THAT WAY, ALLI!” Okay, so me move to the next station whereby that agent takes the tickets we just bought! Now, why couldn’t I have just paid her?

Bavaro Beach

The resort was gorgeous. We stayed at the Majestic Elegance Club. It’s an all-inclusive with a great, friendly staff. I recommend it. I will post a link to my picture gallery in my next post as well as a link to my review of the hotel at TravelAdvisor.com. The service was excellent, the food uneventful.

The highlight of the trip was our Jeep excursion. On other island trips, I have seen these Jeep Safari excursions where they pack everybody into a vehicle and drive you around. Not this one. We got into a truck that drove us to a place where they gave us keys to a Jeep Wrangler; four to a vehicle. We were fortunate to be paired with a couple from New York City and not the loud Italians nor the introverted Belgians. Driving in Bavaro is…well…every man for himself! There are no traffic signals, no stop signs, no road markings, just lots of people on small motorcycles, cars, taxis, and tourist buses speeding about in such organized chaos that it reminded me of the Jetsons.

So we take these Jeeps and we convoy to a sugar cane plantation, through some seriously rough terrain, then through a small village to a cigar plantation where we got to watch a cock fight. Then it was on to lunch at a farm complete with alligators, and giant, I mean giant iguanas. We didn’t eat them. Though, grilling up one of the iguanas would probably have been better than what we were served. Did I mention that the food was pretty uneventful? We finished up the excursion at a Bavaro beach.

Here is Beck chillaxin’ at the farm before lunch. This epitomized the trip; maxin’ and relaxin’.

On to the scallops…

I have grilled scallops a time or two in the past and usually I use one of those largely perforated grill pans in order to keep the scallops from falling in to the fire. Those pans also allow for better stick control because you have better control over the amount of oil as opposed to the grill grates. This time I wanted grill marks. I know it’s aesthetics, but, I wanted them just the same. So I grilled the scallops directly on the grates and with success. I was so proud of myself I poured myself an adult beverage. I would have done that even if they stuck. They keys were to have to grill extremely hot, the scallops substantially sized and brushed liberally with canola oil. Before grilling, I sprinkled them with salt and pepper, then grilled for 2-3 minutes per side.

The corn is white sweet corn that was brushed with canola oil and grilled until tender with a nice char. Then the kernels were cut from the cob. I grill a red bell pepper along side the corn until the skin was totally charred, peeled it, then finely diced it. These guys were combined with ancho chili powder spiked mayonnaise, some diced red onion, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, a small bit of red wine vinegar, and left to chill.

The result, despite the fact that I was in my backyard, was eventful.

If there ever was flavor in layers, this dish had it for me. The thick slice of fresh heirloom tomato, the avocado, then the crab soaked in the lime dressing with jalapenos! I’m telling you, this was the first time I made this, but most certainly will not be the last.

So I’m browsing the fresh vegetable section at Whole Paychex and I spot the heirloom tomatoes. Expensive as hell, but I can’t resist. I bought some nicely ripened avocados so that I could make my chipotle chicken salad, but I was really wanting to make something interesting with the tomatoes. So the chicken salad had to wait for some more avocados. After finding several ideas, this dish piqued my interest. I found it in my Food and Wine recipe book.

Now, I know I must take shellfish in moderation, and I do, but I wanted to shovel this into my face with large digging equipment. I had to keep my wife back from the avocado soaking in the lime dressing so that I could assemble the dish. I served this along side some grilled shrimp and saffron rice. Then we had it again for lunch with some sesame, basil crackers.

In a word, this is “GOOD"!

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To eat or not to eat, that is the question;
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The aches and pains of culinary delicacies,
Or to take pause against a plate of shellfish,
And by opposing, eat them. To cook, to eat;

That’s right. Once again I have been attacked by the “kings disease.” You know they label gout the “kings disease” because back in the day, only the nobles could afford the rich foods that cause the debilitating digression. Here it is a week later and I am still not totally out of the woods. No pain now, but soreness. Gout is the ultimate foodie curse!

Shellfish, beans, and other gout causing dishes aside, we love to take advantage of a good sweet dish. Becky has a giant sweet tooth. She can eat sweets like they are going out of style and never gain a pound, me, on the other hand, yeah, not so much. That doesn’t stop me though. I have to take the sweets in moderation. There’s that word again.

Now I absolutely love brownies. I don’t know what it is, but a warm brownie with vanilla ice cream sends me to a euphoric place. I also love cheesecake. Cherry cheesecake has been a favorite of mine since I was a tyke. So when I saw the recipe for brownie-bottom lemon cheesecake in the May edition of Bon Appétit, I knew immediately that I was going to make it. And we did.

This cheesecake turned out almost perfectly. The brownie bottom was a bit tedious to negotiate; it was very chewy. This was a good thing for eating, but a bit of an issue to slice through when cutting slices of the cake. Other than that, it was perfect. It had the right consistency of a New York cheesecake. We added more lemon than the recipe called for just because I juiced a ton of lemons and we took liberties with the garnish. All in all, I would highly recommend this recipe for those who have an insatiable sweet tooth.

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