Mothers Day 2011

We always have my Mom come over and fix dinner for her and try to have something we haven't made for her before. We did just that today with a Shrimp Salad, Grilled Salmon, and a Creamy Risotto. The Shrimp Salad had boiled shrimp, minced onion and celery, chopped boiled eggs, pickle relish, and a mayo / vinegar sauce, tossed and served on leaf lettuce. The Grilled Salmon was wild caught and turned out to be some of the best I've ever grilled with only fine sea salt, brown sugar, and coarse ground pepper to season it with.

S.O.S.

Everyone knows what that stands for and about everyone has tried it, but you'd be hard pressed to find it made this good very often. The great thing about left overs is they make great meals if you get just a little creative. Tri Tip roast always provides us with some left over for the freezer for everything from Tacos to Philly Cheese Steaks sandwiches, but this S.O.S. is just plain good food. The Wheat Bread is home made and the gravy has a little red wine, onions, and mushrooms to make that great steak even better.

What Was In The Fridge

Someone made Stuffed Pablano Peppers kinda like this and I've made them myself in the past but having been reminded of them I just had to make them again. I had two pounds of Chorizo I made and vac sealed few months ago and this was already a "clean out the fridge day" so I thought I might do two dishes. The stuffing included more of just what was on hand - Chorizo, black beans, sautéed onions, minced jalapenos, crumbled and toasted left over cornbread, cheese, and spicy V-8 juice. I needed to do something with a little Easter Ham and it wound up in a Baked Ramekin dish with a stuffing covering the ham which included: bread crumbs, pineapple and it's juice, onions, celery, roasted red peppers, cheese, and an egg to bind. We made the Poplanos our dinner and I tasted the Ham dish and both turned out real good considering they were made with just what was on hand.

Easter Ham Dinner

It was a very good Easter dinner and in fact every dish turned out just right. Tradition has our house having ham for Easter and we wanted a little left over ham for sandwiches, so I bought two 10 lb smoked ham shanks. I used Tony Chachere's Creaole marinade and used one whole jar to inject both hams. To use as little space as possible in the fridge I set them on the cut side and trimmed the wrap off two third the way down and trimmed the fat off then injected - any liquid ran down in the bottom of the original wrapping, then I wrapped in plastic wrap before refridgerating for 24 hrs. The cook was estimated to be roughly 3 hrs at 325 but I wanted them to have plenty of time to cool and needed the cooker freed up for our andouie and pineapple appetizers. Just before starting the hams to cook, I rubbed liberally with Slabs Birds n Bones and put them on. The night before we had already made a big bowl of Potato Salad (3 lbs of Potatoes), but there was still plenty left to get ready while the ham cooked. Sue always makes sure we have plenty of our garden green beans and corn so that made two of our side dishes. Everybody loves yeast rolls with this meal, so we had plenty of those and another side dish that has become very popular with our crown that we decided to include in the Easter dinner for the first time - Broccoli Casserole. We have one in the crowd that does not like pork of any kind, so I ran back to the office to get some of our vac sealed Brisket and I'm thinking I may have to replace the ham next year with a couple of briket as it seemed to be enjoyed as much as anything else. Someone brought deviled eggs and another a desert sandwich cookies. Almost forgot the Sweet Potato Casserole my Mom brought and the desert we made - Pretzel Strawberry Salad which is really a close cousin to a Lush type dish but the Pretzels take the place of the graham / crumb bottom layer and provides a nice crunch with just enough salt to make it noticeable and good. We love feeding the family but it must be an age thing because it does seem to take more and more out of us these days.

Tri Tip Birthday

It was suppose to be a great get together for by son's Dennis & Davids birthday (well me too since mine is only 4 days later) - BUT they both felt a little under-the-weather and had to cancel. "And here I thought, I was the old man the crowd." I'm sure all that driving for their out of town jobs each weekend had something to do with it. By the time we knew we had already marinated the Tri Tips so we went ahead with the entire cook. The pics below only show the smallest one which I cooked to 160+ and the largest which I cooked to 135. I shaved the rest for sandwiches.

Be Careful Slicing Beef

It is no secret I love beef the best, enjoy it the most, have it most often, and like foul mouthed Anthony Bourdin, “still want more”. So beginning with St Patrick’s Day, and a lucky score on a small store bought Corned Beef Brisket and then again this past weekend with one of my favorite and inexpensive steaks (the Tri Tip), I discovered just how important it is to slice these two cuts of beef properly once cooked. The problem was not with me knowing to slice across the grain but rather taking to time to look and actually do it. The lucky score on Corned Beef came about when my Step Son bought a Corned Beef (very small) and dropped it by for me to cook him some of my BBQ he and wife Anna loves so well – not knowing it’s not the same. At the last minute just before St Patrick’s day arrived, I hit a couple of stores and they were out – what to do? Simple, just pick up a real brisket for his BBQ, which is what he really wanted anyway and use his Corned Beef, which I rinsed off, and soaked overnight in water to provide a milder Corned Beef flavor. I had a short trip to make that afternoon and stopped by home to put it on to cook while I was gone and decided to go with a Dutch Oven cook with onions, potatoes, carrots, glazing the meat with a little garlic powder sprinkled on top, whole grain mustard, and brown sugar. With meat glazed and placed in the pan and surrounded by veggies, I poured a can of O’Doul’s non alcoholic beer and enough water to reach about half way up on the meat and cooked at 275 to and internal of 200, covered (about 3 hrs), added cabbage during the last 30 min and all was well till I forgot to slice ACROSS the grain. We have the Tri Tip quit often because, like the Corned Beef it serves a dual role in that, one Tri Tip provides enough for a steak dinner for two with enough left over for a Roast Beef sandwich Made In Heaven the next day. If your not familiar with this cut of beef, it is in a shape that will make you want to slice it based on it’s shape rather than check the grain of the beef first and once you do you’ll most likely find it runs just the opposite from what you would think. Thankfully I can end by saying, in just under two weeks time, I have redeemed myself on both counts and have probably made the scale creep up slightly as a result, but I don’t care. Click HERE and you will find some fine information about the subject and at the bottom of that page if your interest there is also some great info on cooking steaks.

BBQ Pork and Brisket

This past Saturday afternoon I trimmed and injected a Boston Butt and Brisket, the brisket was cooked for Craig and Anna and I had a single butt in the freezer. It’s always nice to have both or at least something else in the cooker to take advantage of having it fired up for such a long amt of time. I learned or re-learned a few things beginning with – pulled pork is better slightly under cooked than overcooked or at least for bbq it is. Secondly that marvelous thing called Burnt Ends, which is the Point meat on a whole Brisket, is indeed my favorite BBQ Beef and these were by far the best I’ve ever cooked. I separated the Point from the Flat before cooking which I don’t always do and at 165 internal on the Flat the rub was not setting up very much but the point was looking real good in that respect so I continued cooking to get a better bark on the flat. When the flat looked like it had a good bark the internal was at or near 180 so I wrapped it but the surprise was that point was more like 195 and looked great and tender enough so I pulled it off and cubed it up only to find it was as I said my best Burnt Ends ever. I never sauced any of the meats yesterday but at a contest I would have held those Burnt Ends in the cambro and reheated in sauce being very careful not to cook anymore. The only other thing I thought would be useful in the future was after pulling the pork and separating the big muscles from the rest, I pulled the rest and then used a meat cleaver to chop it a little bit and I liked the result of doing it that way better than just pulled. I usually survey the meat after separating it and decide which way I’m going to go to build the box to present to the judges and sometimes it has pulled pork and sometime just chucks along with the money muscle, and at other time all three – it just seems to change with me and I’m not sure that’s good but so be it. First contest is 4/15 in Kings Mtn, N.C. and I’m anxious to get that first one behind me.

Dillard Turn In Time 2010

Making Speghetti

I love pasta and found this cheap pasta machine at TJ Max for half price so I thought - why not. It seems to do a good job but this first trial did not go very well due to not mixing up the dough correctly and / or not letting it rest before starting. It was really good and tasted fresh and by the time I added a Shrimp and Homemade Summer Sausage with onion and garlic to some Homemade Bachamel Sauce it was pretty stellar.

Italian Spaghetti and French Bread

I made this spaghetti using a pack of Johnsonville Hot Italian Sausage links and a handful of smokey Canadian Bacon I made and the smokey bacon really made the dish special. It also had the benefit of home grown canned tomatoes, and some fresh basil and was cooked real slow, man it was good. I made the pasta from scratch and that was a first for me but definitely won't be the last. Making it was easy except for cutting it out and I did a poor job of that and got them too big. We finally convinced ourselves that we needed a stand mixer enough to actually go ahead and buy one yesterday and I think that's the best purchase I've made in a long time. Think about it, baking bread makes your house smell soooo good, fresh baked bread is one of the pleasures of life especially for a bread lover, and it should pay for itself as high as bread is getting these days.