Bologna & Bacon Sandwich

A quick google for Bologna & Bacon Sandwich shows a couple of breakfast sandwiches with egg and that's it! I guess this is about as original as I get and to me it was a no brainer. If you think about that lucious creamy texture of N. Ga. Round Steak combined with that crispy fried bacon piled high along with all your favorite sandwich fixens, you'll see what I mean. But if your fortunate enough to own a smoker / grill you can kick it up a whole bunch of notches (and no I have not watched Emeril or the Food Network for several years now). This Bologna was slathered in Emerils Mellow Yellow Mustard though (I love this product) and coated with Cajun Rub then smoked with Pecan wood in my Traeger Pellet Smoker / Grill. Just Look!  Also consider deep frying the bolo just before making your sandwich.  Good stuff.

Freezer Diving Done Right

First thing you have to understand about FREEZER DIVING is that the stuff you put in the freezer had to have been good to start with for it to be good on your second go around. I started Saturday morning by throwing some flap meat off the spare ribs and a ham bone in a big pot on a slow simmer for some soup Sunday. That took a few hours and another few to cool enough to pick the meat off that ham bone, then I strained the broth and let it cool enough to slide in the fridge till Sunday to get that fat off the top. It still seemed like the broth would be too rich so didn't use it all. Onions, garlic, carrot, celery, roasted and peeled hatch green chili peppers, chayote squash, pasta, and cilantro and lemon to serve with crusty bread. Chayote squash is one of my favorite things to go into a pot of soup, I highly recommend giving it a try if you have never had it before. Steak can be a little boring but not this time for me because it was Ribeye and a couple little Lamb Chops, Lamb and Beef, what could be better - life is good. I had never taken the time to par boiled the little new potatoes first before roasting and from now own that little step will not be skipped. Those lil suckers were getting crisp before they were brown - a few dried herbs, one being chives and these were dang near as good as the meat. Sunday morning breakfast was a couple of BONELESS PORK CHOPS that were frozen in a tupper ware container along with the cabbage and onions they were smothered with, Sue just took the meat out and scrapped off the cabbage and heated those in a skillet and made gravy with them still in the skillet and we served that over hard toast with hot pickled eggs and some of those leftover taters. We still got some more freezer diving to do but if it all turns out this good I can't complain.

Smoked Then Fried Ribs

Well not exactly fried but rather simmered real low n slo in enough lard to cover. It's a wonderful way to do pork. We just did ribs tips like these the traditional way a couple of weeks ago and these were our favorite by a good margine.

Chilaquiles

I love this dish and have from the moment I smelled something above everything else that was cooking at Benjamin Espinoza's restaurant on 5th Ave about 10 years ago. It smelled like the best pop corn ever and if you can imagine that smell taking over the whole restuarant - well it was just amazing and the first thought was "I gotta have some of that stuff". The dish was not on the menu and in fact an Aunt had come by to cook this for Benjamin and those that worked with him that day. They could tell how much I wanted to try this and gave both Sue and I a huge helping each and boy was it good. Here's how to fix it: use stale corn tortillas cut into 8ths and if they don't seem stale enough you can put em into a 350 degree oven for a few min. Pour veggie oil into a small deep pan and cook them till they are chewy but not crisp. Add a little of that oil to a large HOT frying pan and add the tortillas, and imediately add a cup or two of salsa. The salsa can be any kind you like but preferably homemade and fried, like salsa verde. I made mine with a few fresh jalapenos, can of tomatoes, chopped onion, garlic all blended together with some cilantro and then fried in a HOT & DEEP pot in a couple of tbs of oil. Just keep the tortillas and sauce moving around in the pan to prevent it popping out and long enough for the tortillas to absorb the sauce. Top with cheese and serve with any thing you like and you can also have some meat to go into the pan on that last step.

First Fall Chili

It rained a tad yesterday and got a little cool out so next thing you know I'm being sent home early to make a pot of Chili. I love Chili myself and my favorite way to eat it is with a good Pimento Cheese sandwich, but alas I had to settle for a bowl with a little cheese on top and some hot Tortillas. I wanted this to be some really good Chili so I left that little pack of ground beef in the freezer and went for that 1 1/2 lb pack of BBQ Brisket Burnt Ends. Being perfectly cooked and vac sealed they didn't need anything done to them but heated up but I cooked them a good while longer right in the bag in boiling water. So with that wonderful meat to make the Chili with, I'm trying to think of anything else I can do to make it better than average, and I happen to remember an assortment of Dried Chili Pepper I bought not long ago and decided to make my own Chili Powder with those. I used only one Guajillo and 3 Anchos and about 3 Canned Chili Chipotles in Sauce that I pureed and that mixture just about made the Chili too hot. I even seeded those dried ones before roasting and grinding in the coffee grinder, so I guess I just used too much. It had a whole large onion chopped and four or 5 gloves of garlic into the pan to sweat down good to start the cook, then I added the meat, Chili Powder, and a jar of Tomatoes, and finally a can of drained and rinse Great Northern Beans. Why white beans in Chile? you ask? Because that's all I had, and they worked great and I just don't make Chili without beans in it like some do out on the left coast. Anyway you sure wouldn't know that it had BBQ beef in it.

Lunch At Home

We got lunch on Wednesday down pat. Sue keeps Aubrey and stops by the office after picking her up and makes the deposit on the way home. I close for lunch about 5 min early to get a little head start on the hour lunch at home with Aubrey. Today we had a pretty good sandwich but as you can see there was a lot more to go home for than just that old sandwich.

Albondigas en Chipotle (Mexican Meatballs)

Here's a recipe I keep going back to cuz it's very good. Started this with grinding my own chuck and used the whole 2 lbs for the recipe omitting the 1 lb of ground pork. I don't know that I've ever included the one lb pork or not but I'm sure it's good, it's just easier this way. I would like to try it and maybe even make it with ground lamb once too. You can find this recipe in my online recipe file along with about 600 other hand picked recipes here. I made up the meat balls first and used pickled eggs instead of just plain boiled eggs to stuff in the center of each meatball. Then I made my Chipotle Sauce using the canned Chipotles Adobados and I just love this product and never made real good Chile till I started using this in it. Everything in the sauce gets ground and I just used a food processer. So with the sauce made and cooked down a bit and the meatballs ready it was out to the smoker where I used a holy veggie stir fry pan to hold the meatballs over the sauce and cooked directly over the charcoal till the meat was cooking and almost done. At this point I removed the pot of sauce and browned up the meatballs directly over the coals to add a bit more flavor, then back in the sauce they went. Served on some nice rolls, but these are equally good and maybe even better served with hot tortillas. I made this recipe and took to the Mobile, Al contest once and everybody loved it and it wasn't hard to do since I made up everything at home before leaving for the contest.

Boneless Beef Rib Omelet

A lil sauteed bell pepper and shreeded beef in the middle of an Omelete is a wonderful thing. Add another Rib on the side and you got a real good breakfast.

Slopper

So...I've done the Slopper thing now and they are good but I think I'll keep my Sauce for another use from now on. That sauce is just to good to put on good burger, for me it's just not a match. The harder I try making good pics the worst they get, I gotta get my lil Samsung fixed.

Labor Day

I know blogs are not just for trivial things like cooking and taking pics of what you cooked and believe you me much more important matters like current events the political land scape weigh on my mind as much as anything, but this seems to provide a way to kinda get away from all that for me. So here's what went on at the house Labor Day and the day before...

I've never had Bang Bang Shrimp at the restaurant but this was the 3rd or fourth time we've had em at home and this sauce is really good. All you need is some mayo (Kraft - there is a reason it says on the bottle REAL MAYONNAISE), some Sweet Chili Sauce, and Hot Chili Oil mixed together putting the Hot Chili oil to taste. Oh man, there is just something about that creamy, sweet, and hot all at the same time on a deep fried shrimp. You can also Google for Copycat Bang Bang Shrimp. The salad was avocado, red onion, tomato, oil and vinegar.



It was Rib Tips yesterday and I hit the floor early and made the decision to do the cook at the office rather than try to wrestle any of the larger cookers in and out of the truck by myself. I happened to think about some rib racks that I use to use some and found that with one of those I could get the entire load into the Traeger and boy was that a relief - you just don't know how much easier it is using one of these Pellet cookers. After getting the ribs on I headed back to the house (less than 5 min drive) to put the baked beans together. Everybody really loves the Baked Bean Quintet recipe so that's what I cook but this time it was just a quartet (1 can ea, Navy, Garbozo, Kidney, and Black Beans) as we didn't need so much with the small crowd. I always like some meat of some kind in the beans and it's usually pulled pork, but I had a real small pack of burnt ends and I do believe this was the best I've ever made and that's what everyone was saying. Sue made a chocolate cake and it happened to be setting there when I pulled the beans out of the oven. Looking at the cake and the beans both reminds me of a fella I worked with years ago from Onieta, Tn and what he said about eating a piece of Chocolate cake along with your beans to sweeten the music - I don't know what he could have meant by that but considering where he was from, it could have been anything.


Since I was doing the cook at the office / store I didn't do the finish in Lard as I had planned and just stuck with adding a little broth to each of 3 half pans and jacked the heat up to 325 (cooked em at 250 for about 3 hours first) and that higher temp really helped get the meat to the falling off the bone stage. After removing from the cooker I pulled the meat from the bones and removed those little cartilages, placed back under a real hot broiler a couple times and you had to love this Pulled Rib Meat. All it had for flavoring was the flavor from the Mojo marinade and Salt and that Cinnamon tasting rub Johnny Trigg uses a lot.




Finally if your wondering what that cat is doing in those pics on the kitchen counter, this baby we got to keep all day has taken a liking to that thing and we had to take it away from her for fear she was going to drop it on the tile floor.

Country Style Beef Ribs

Nothing more than chuck roast sliced into strips but cooking them that way sure makes for some good stuff. No way to top this supper - Cracklin Corn Bread, Cream Corn, Fried Okra, Mashed Taters, and Stewed Squash. Man was that meat good.