FoodB

Guess I missed a whole month there. That's what I get for bragging so much about how well I was doing, posting-wise, a few months back.

So what happened? Well we got poor for awhile there. If you read our main site you know all about our adventures finding a job for Jenn. So with that weighing on us, we just really couldn't afford much. But things are better now. Jenn is 2 weeks into a job she can turn into a career and I am having a little less of the stress related ailments that I suffer from.

Now that we are on our way to being back on our feet we have taken the last few budget reduced months as a lesson. Now when we shop for food we will be looking for as many deals as possible and crafting meals around what we are able to score. Also we are both becoming coupon hounds. Even though we have money coming in, we both remember all to well what it was like to be without.

So last night we made up some chicken. The recipe called for grilling the bird and the common thought when we heard that was that we would just end up pan frying it. For reasons I can't explain I decided that I really wanted to grill the dinner. Last night was really windy and all I had was charcoal, but I couldn't be stopped. Here is the recipe that Jenn found:

Grilled Chicken Breast with Ginger and Soy

2 cups soy sauce
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup dark sesame oil
1 lime, juiced
4 inches fresh ginger, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, pounded thin

1. Combine the 1 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons sesame oil, half of the lime juice, ginger, and garlic, and 1/4 cup cilantro in the bottom of each of 2 large freezer bags. Put 2 chicken breasts in each bag and get them coated with the marinade. Then set the bags on a work surface, force the air out and seal them. Allow chicken to marinade for 1 hour. You can also freeze the chicken right in the marinade at this point. To do so fold each bag over the chicken 3 times, tape them well, and date them. Put it in the freezer for up to 2 months.
2. Place a large grill pan on 2 burners over medium-high heat, or preheat an outdoor gas or charcoal grill. Fold a few paper towels into a thick square. Blot some oil on the paper towels and then carefully and quickly wipe the ridges of the gill pan or the hot grates of the grill to make a non-stick surface.
3. Remove the chicken breasts from the marinade and season with salt and pepper. Lay the chicken on the hot grill and cook 3 to 5 minutes on each side until charred and firm. Serve with the sesame noodles and cucumber pickles.

Good stuff here. Boy am I glad that I fired up the grill because I don't think it would have been half as good if we hadn't. We also had a bunch of this leftover. We decided to freeze it and we will use it whenever we don't feel like going though the motions of making dinner for the night.

Posted by Gordon at 09:52 AM | Permalink

Silent round here. Been busy. School. Work. The usual.

A few weeks back, Jennifer's mom was having another open house. She offered to buy the food if I was willing to cook it. Always one to step up to a challenge like that, I accepted. I had my heart set on smoking a big ole chunk of pig.

Just a quick info session on the process of smoking. Smoking is cooking (in a BBQ looking device) at less than 250 degrees for long periods of time. Generally you only smoke larger pieces of meat this way because: a) smaller pieces will finish too quickly, therefore negating the reason for smoking; adding flavor b) larger pieces have more fat and can withstand the long cook time better, and c) it's just more fun to say that you stayed up all night cooking. So the main recipients of the smoking method are beef brisket, beef or pork ribs, and pork shoulder.

All that being said, I had yet to try smoking a pork shoulder. So we all went to the market and I settled on a picnic roast (mainly because they did not have the more sought after pork butt which I wanted). So here is the recipe as far as I can remember:

Pulled Pork (picnic roast)

1 Pork Picnic Roast (approximately 7-10 lbs.)
Generous amount of spice rub (I used a BBQ rub we get from Plowboys)
4-6 Baseball sized wood chunks (I used apple)
Hamburger buns or large kaiser rolls
BBQ sauce
Cole slaw

Basting Sauce
2 cups apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
3 Tablespoons ground black pepper
2 Tablespoons table salt
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 Tablespoon paprika
1 Tablespoon pepper

1. Fire up you smoker according to your directions. The temperature of your smoker should be between 200 and 250 degrees.
2. Remove any skin and excess fat from the roast. Apply a generous amount of spice rub to cover (it should look like the spices are caked on. Don't worry about over spicing because it cooks into the meat and that is good eating).
3. Place roast on smoker. Cook for about 1 1/2 hours per pound. Your desired temperature is 188 degrees so your cooking time may vary.
4. About halfway through you cook, mix the basting sauce in a pot. Warm over a low flame and mix together. Flip the roast on the smoker and baste with the sauce.
5. Once roast hits 188 degrees, remove the roast and let it rest, covered in foil, for 30 minutes to 2 hours. Once the rest is up, pull the pork into small bite size pieces with your hands. Mix some of the basting sauce into the pulled pieces of pork. Serve with buns, BBQ sauce, and cole slaw.

Can't believe I waited this long to cook this guy. Really good stuff here. Next time I will try a full pork butt instead of the picnic. Supposedly the picnic has more of a ham-like flavor. I didn't notice any of that but I would like to try at least once.

This was definitely an adventure. I started cooking the roast around 10 p.m. the night before. I have a remote thermometer that I can program to wake me up if the temp gets too high/low and will warn me when the meat hits a certain temp. That little remote is one of the best investments I ever made. We also had to speed up the cook at the end because I hit a temperature plateau. Butts and picnics sometimes hit a temperature and stay there for a long time. I had a hungry houseful of people, so I had to speed the process up a bit by increasing the temp of the smoker.

Just a word of warning also. I drink beer when I BBQ. When I am grilling that means I will have about 2 beers when cooking because most grilling takes only up to 30 minutes. With smoking the time moves up to 10+ hours. Don't be a Gordon and start drinking early. It only leads to bad things.

Posted by Gordon at 01:18 PM | Permalink

So much for that whole record of posting every 3 days or so. I do have an excuse though. Someone killed my car.

About a month ago, Jen's mom put her house up for sale. She is planning on moving up to Oregon and hopefully someday soon, we shall follow. We both really miss a lot about Oregon (the food selection is top notch up there) and want to really make that area our future home.

With the sale of the house comes open houses. For the first open house, we invited the family and dogs over so the realtor could do his business and we decided to cook up some ribs. The ribs were smoked and I have to say that it has been awhile since I have had ribs that good. One of the other things that we threw on the grill were some shrimp marinated in a sauce that Jenn whipped up. She got the inspiration for the sauce from watching Iron Chef and decided what better time to experiment. Here is the recipe for the sauce:

Mean Green Dressing

1 bundle of flat leaf parsley (Italian Parsley)
1/2 bundle of cilantro
1 bundle of small scallion tops (you can find these in the herb section of your grocery store)
5 sweet basil leaves
1 lemon
1 clove of garlic
Kosher salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Olive Oil, about 1/2 a cup

• Squeeze half the lemon into a blender, the add the bund of parsley, cilantro, scallions and basil, garlic, salt and pepper to taste. Start to blend in the blender slowly adding the olive oil as you go. You may or may not need all the /2 a cup just make sure to eyeball and taste as you go to get the consistency you like. If you need to, add more salt or lemon juice.

Man that was good on the shrimp. The flavors really came out. Grilling the shrimp was pretty easy with this on it because they were pretty much coated with olive oil. There was some leftover sauce the next day and Jenn tried throwing it on a salad. She enjoyed it yet I did not. I am finding that I still like my salad with no dressing so don't take this as a negative review of it. Just not my cup of tea.

Posted by Gordon at 07:56 AM | Permalink

I think I found my new love when it comes to BBQing.

About a year ago I was really wanting to get a charcoal BBQ. At that point I had a propane grill that I got some time ago as a Christmas present and I had my smoker which I bought myself as a tax return present. So naturally I wanted the final major form of BBQ cooking to complete my collection. I found one on craigslist for $10 and it has been sitting in my yard pretty much unused ever since then. Propane is so much easier to just fire up and throw the meat on.

Then I ran out of propane.

So when I really wanted to make the below recipe, I had to fire up the charcoal grill. At first I was kind of upset that I had o take the time out to light the coals, get them set up and then watch the meat to make sure it didn't burn. Somewhere in the middle of all of that I realized that a strange calm came over me and I was actually enjoying the simplicity of it all. So I think from now on I will be doing all of our BBQing on the charcoal grill because I'm not really that busy of a person and I really had a blast.

Grilled Tri-Tip Steak with Bell Pepper Salsa

Marinade
2 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp sherry vinegar or apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
A couple of turns of freshly ground black pepper
A sprinkling of salt

Steak
1 2-pound tri-tip steak or roast
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Salsa
1 large green bell pepper, stem and seeds removed, finely chopped (if you don't have green, probably any color will do)
6 green onions, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbsp chopped parsley, basil, or arugula
1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes
2 Tbsp sherry vinegar or apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Prepare the marinade in a large bowl, stirring together all of the marinade ingredients. Place steak in the bowl and coat on all sides with the marinade. Let the steak sit in the marinade and come to room temperature while you prepare the grill. (No need to marinate the steak more than 20 minutes or so.)
2. Prepare the grill for direct high heat. If you are using charcoal, use approximately 5 pounds of coals. Bank the coals so that more of them are on one side than the other, so that you have a high heat zone and a lower heat zone.
3. When the grill is ready and hot, remove the meat from the marinade and dry it all around with paper towels. Sprinkle all sides of the tri-tip generously with both salt and freshly ground black pepper.
4. Place the tri-tip on the grill, on the hot direct heat side. Leave the cover off and watch carefully for flare-ups. As the meat browns, any fat will melt and drip on to the coals causing flare-ups. These are okay, as long as they don't get out of control. Keep moving the tri-tip around the grill away from the flames if they get too high. After one side of the meat is browned (about 5 minutes) use tongs to flip it on to the other side. When it is browned all around, move the tri-tip to the lower heat side of the grill. Cover the grill and close the vents enough so that you maintain about 300-325°F temperature in the grill. (If you are using a charcoal grill, you can place a meat thermometer through the vents to measure the heat.) If you are using a gas grill, turn off one of the burners and move the meat over that burner for indirect heating.
5. Cook the tri-tip until a meat thermometer reads 130°F when inserted into the thickest part of the meat (15-30 minutes, depending on the thickness of the meat). Remove the tri-tip from the grill. Cover with aluminum foil and let rest for 10 minutes.
6. Prepare the salsa by combining all of the salsa ingredients into a small bowl.
7. Cut the tri-tip in 1/4-inch slices against the grain. Serve with the salsa.

Wow. This was a great meal. Jenn made some potatoes with garlic in a foil pack that I threw on the grill also. The potatoes were perfect. I overcooked the meat a little (ended up being about medium-well) but it was still pretty tender. The star of the show though was the salsa that we put on top of the steak. We used an orange pepper instead of green because we both find that the flavor of the orange ones is the best. After the meal was done I commented that the salsa (which didn't really taste like the salsa that we are used to from Mexican restaurants) could have been used in more ways. We could have thrown it in with the potatoes and it would have tasted great. We could have ate it by itself and it would have made a good side dish. All in all I think we found a keeper and this one will definitely be the recipe of choice when I get tri-tip in the future.

Also to give credit, I found this recipe on Simply Recipes. I subscribed to their RSS feed some time ago and their stuff always looks really good.

Posted by Gordon at 09:14 AM | Permalink

I mentioned in yesterdays post that I ended up making the filet mignon recipe twice. Well the reason was, we decided to cook some beef ribs on Saturday so we could freeze the bones and give them to our dogs whenever we want to give us some quiet time or we have guests over. We started doing this about a year ago and found out that buying a slab of beef ribs is only about 4 dollars and you get around 7 to 8 bones out of it. Much better than buying rawhide bones in the store which go for around 4 bucks a piece. The bones once cooked won't splinter and the dogs just love them. The bonus to all this is that you can make some good BBQ with beef ribs so we get a meal and the dogs get a treat.

That was the plan. We invited some friends over and had everything all ready. I started the ribs early in the day because they take 6 hours to smoke and when I brought them inside the house I was petrified to find out that they were a big hunk of charred bones. After investigating, the meat under the char was still good and cooked fairly well but the outside ruined the flavor. Luckily our dogs aren't as discerning as we are when it comes to taste so they are getting an even bigger treat because they get the meat that we usually eat attached to their bones.

The reasons that I think things went horribly wrong were either my thermometer was reading the wrong temperature or that I put to much smoking wood in the burner. I am going to check the thermometer this weekend but I have a feeling it was the wood. I'm just grateful it wasn't a $30 brisket or pork butt that was on the receiving end of my mistake.

Posted by Gordon at 10:11 AM | Permalink

I'm so fraking sick of being sick. And yes, I realize I am watching to much Battlestar Galactica because now I am starting to curse like they do.

I first noticed that I was getting sick about 6 weeks ago and it's been a pretty miserable existence since then. I've been getting sore throats and some really crappy congestion off and on and I've been neglecting most of my chores since then. Jenn caught whatever it is this week and is lucky that she gets to stay at home and fight it off. I did go to the doctor and they told me I had allergies. I've had allergies since I was about 1 year old and I know when they are effecting me and this ain't it.

In the midst of all the suffering, I found time to BBQ on Sunday night. Food Network is doing a big Thanksgiving event for the next two weeks and I caught the Bobby Flay grilling show. He made an Turkey Breast with an orange sauce that really got my interest. So with all of this inspiration in my head, I went out to the store to get me some turkey breast and was pleased to find out that the five stores that I went to (including my beloved Plowboys) only sold from turkey breast with the rib cage still intact. I didn't have either the patience to wait for it to thaw nor the will to de-bone it so I settle on making his recipe with chicken thighs. Really good stuff! After rereading the recipe, I noticed that I omitted about half of the ingredients for the orange sauce (I only used orange juice, honey, lemon juice, onions and garlic) and the sauce was still pretty tasty. Here's a link to the recipe:

Brined Turkey Breast with Spanish Spice Rub and Sour Orange Sauce

Hopefully in the near future I am going to retry this recipe as it was intended. I still can't believe I couldn't find the type of turkey I wanted, two weeks before Thanksgiving. Oh well.

For Thanksgiving we are going up to Victorville and I am in charge of dessert. I am going to make the Pumpkin Cheesecake that I made for Halloween and try making an apple and pumpkin pie as well. Should be fun. I also found out that my family is serving ham for Thanksgiving. Now I love ham and all but it just seems a little to against the grain to not have turkey available. My parents have a pretty good grill so I'm thinking I will sneak some turkey legs up with me and make this recipe. It was also featured on the same episode of Boy Meets Grill and looked really good as well.

Note: just a quick note, that picture was one of the first to appear when I typed in Orange Chicken in google. Man I love the Internet!

Posted by Gordon at 03:12 PM | Permalink

Last week I found country style pork ribs were on sale for about $0.80/lbs and having never cooked country style pork ribs I figured what would it hurt if I lost my 3 dollars. I've cooked a lot of ribs in the past (mostly beef ribs) and never heard country style rib cut so I had to do a little research. The cut is located closer to the shoulder of the pig which is a very fatty area and has some odd bones that make eating difficult. Below is an image I found of where the ribs come from which helped me decide how to cook them.



The recipe I used called for an extended sit in a rub that consisted of about every spice we had in the cupboard. After that I threw it on the smoker for 3 hours and basted it with BBQ sauce every 3 hours.

They were edible which was to say they were unremarkable. I don't think the cut of meat lends itself well to slow cooking or BBQ'ing in general. When I was growing up, my mother used to cook this cut of meat in the oven probably around 400 degrees plus and smothered in BBQ sauce. She used to call them spare ribs which until a few years ago I thought spare ribs didn't have bones in them just a lot of fat. So my little experiment with another cut of pork didn't work out as well as I hoped but it was only 3 bucks and I am getting two meals out of it so I'll have more money for comic books.

Posted by Gordon at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Saturday I got to BBQ. I had my heart set on making some lamb chops that I had a recipe for but when I went out to buy them all they had were the little lamb loin chops. The recipe called for the larger steak size chops. Finding a good selection of lamb seems to pretty difficult here in California and if anyone knows any markets that stock lamb send me an e-mail.

So I went to the store and settled on making a pre-marinated pork roast. My mom turned me onto those prepackaged pork packages (alliteration rules) that they sell in the meat section about a year ago and I've been meaning to try them again. I didn't have time to marinade my own meat (yes I said it) so it was wither that or make hamburgers.

The pork needed about 45 minutes to reach 160 degrees (the safe temp for pork) and was really good once sliced. The marinade was an onion/garlic liquid that went really well with the roast.

As a side dish I made the Creamy Squash And Sweet Potato Parcel from Rob Rainfords show License to Grill. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients
1/2 cup of cream
2 tablespoons of dry white wine
1 cup of grated cheddar cheese
Half a stick of butter
1 tablespoon of flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons of brown sugar
1/2 a pound of sweet Potatoes, cubed
1/2 a pound of squash, cubed
1 onion, finely diced
2 large pieces of tin foil

1. Combine the cream, wine, cheese, onion, butter, parsley, nutmeg, cinnamon and sugar in a bowl.
2. Combine the sweet Potatoes and squash in a separate bowl. Double the foil pieces by placing one large piece of foil on top of the other. Empty the vegetable mixture into the center of the foil and season with salt and pepper. Spoon the liquid cheese mixture over the vegetables. Fold the sides of the foil up to create a parcel and seal the foil shut.
3. Preheat to grill to 350ºF/175ºC.
4. Place the foil package on the grill and cook with the lid closed for 30 minutes. Cook until the contents are soft.

This was pretty good and I might have messed it up a little by forgetting to add butter. Other than the butter I thought it could use a bunch more brown sugar. I think there aren't too many things better that brown sugar and squash together.

Posted by Gordon at 01:26 PM | Permalink

Ugg. Wanted to post this yesterday but got busy in the morning and sick in the evening. I gotta say that it sucks to get sick at the end of a work day because you don't get to skip work and the time you have at home is marred by feeling like shit.

I was dead set on BBQ'ing this weekend. It has been over a month since I last fired up the 'que and I feel like they're going to take away my BBQ'ing license if I don't get out there and start burning things. Hell I cooked more on the grill in winter than I have so far this summer. So I went back to where I started when I was expanding my BBQ repertoire (yes I had to look up how to spell that) and consulted Steve Raichlen's BBQU website. I settled on making his Pancetta Grilled Scallops because a) it seemed easy, b) it was different than the usual chicken/steak that I usually cook on the grill and c) I ain't ever cooked shellfish before on the grill. So off to the market.

The scallops were kinda expensive but since I was experimenting I wasn't worried about that but finding pancetta seemed a little tougher. Instead of trying every deli I could find I just went straight to the only Italian deli I know in the area, Lucci's Deli. They were able to slice it as thinly as possible and I was able to pick up some frozen gnocchi while I was there for a dinner to be named later. In addition to the scallops I decided to make some chicken yakitori as well just in case the seafood didn't work out and some corn because I always try to grill vegetables when I get the chance.

Getting the scallops prepared was the most time consuming part of the whole day. Basically it was like trying to wrap a wet piece of paper around a wet piece of soap. The pancetta was prone to tearing at the slightest misstep and made for some interesting looking scallops. After that I rested and waited for our guests to arrive because it would only take a few minutes to cook everything.

After the coals were fired up, I set my $10 Weber kettle together and threw on the corn. Once the corn was on I knew I had a problem because they took up about half of the grilling area and I had a lot more food on the way. So I fired up the propane grill and threw the corn on there. Found out sometime later that I was out of gas so they got moved once more to the oven inside. With the charcoal grill free I threw everything else on. The scallops were really temperamental on the grill and were very tough to control. The pancetta sent a lot of fat onto the coals which caused a significant amount of flair ups and I don't feel like they came out as good as they sounded on paper. If I ever decide to do wrapped scallops again I plan on just pan frying them and skip the open fire portion of the show. Much easier to control heat in a pan than on a grill.

The chicken though was nice. Instead of brushing the sauce on the chicken while cooking I would really suggest marinating them. The sauce doesn't stick very well because of the mirin and it would just add a lot more flavor. I really enjoyed them little sticks of meat though and over the last year I have grown a new respect for chicken thighs.

The corn was my favorite of the meal which I think is funny because it was also the cheapest. I threw some BBQ rub as well as some salt and pepper in the foil pack before I cooked them and thought it really helped change something that I am so used to into something else. I'm going to try throwing some lime juice and cilantro on next time and see if that helps any (I saw Emeril do that one).

So it was an okay BBQ experience. I'm definitely leaving the scallops to the professionals from now on and am already starting to think about what I can cook next weekend after seeing the Packers take Phillip Rivers out for the year.

Posted by Gordon at 01:09 PM | Permalink

Seems odd to blow things up in celebration but that didn't stop me from lighting off a good portion on my friends Nate's 4th arsenal. Fire is fun!

Speaking of fire, for the Fourth BBQ that we went to, I got to cook up some chicken. As I always do, I went to Plowboys to see what selection they had for grilling. I didn't really feel like shelling out for beef and I've never cooked pork on a grill, so chicken it was. They had leg and thigh pieces for about $1.25 a pound so I was able to get three of them for about $4.00. They have a pretty good selection of pre-marinated meats as well but I decided against that because I did just start a food blog and it wouldn't look to good if I wasn't at least trying to find new recipes to make.

To prepare the chicken parts, I brined them for an hour and a half. The brine consisted of 6 cups of water, 6 Tbs. of kosher salt and 3/4 of a cup of brown sugar. This is a pretty basic brine that you can use on any poultry or pork or just about anything you want to. For those of you that don't know what brining is, basically it's a way to add moisture and spices into pieces of meat that will tend to dry out when it is cooked in high heat. Chicken and pork really do well after brining and I have yet to hear a complaint. The only thing you want to watch out for after brining is that you don't want to add to much more salt to the meat because it has already absorbed a lot of salt through the process and nobody but my wife likes a lot of salt on their meat.

After that came the marinade. I tried looking up some poultry rubs but had no success online. Seems everyone likes to add a lot of hot spices to rubs and my wife can't eat really spicy food so my only option was to make one from scratch. I started off chopping some fresh oregano, parsley and a bit of rosemary and mixed it together with some ponzu (Japanese citrus vinegar) and mirin (Japanese rice wine). I was trying to get an asian flavor because I've eaten enough BBQ chicken that I really need to experiment more so I don't end up hating chicken. That tasted all right but could have used something extra so back to the drawing board. I just started adding things to the marinade and seeing if I could improve the flavor. I added paprika (my eternal secret ingredient, don't tell anyone), ground ginger, sugar, and a touch of hoisin sauce and that was the final mixture I went with. There was a lot of adjusting of the flavors by what I was tasting so I don't have the exact amounts of what I put into it. I dumped all of that into a freezer bag as well as the chicken and refrigerated it until we left.

Once the chicken was on I mixed together a BBQ glaze that Jenn had heard about somewhere on TV of Hoisin sauce (Chinese BBQ sauce) and marmalade. I mixed 2 parts hoisin sauce to 1 part marmalade and that seemed to be a pretty good balance of the flavors. I glazed the chicken about 5 minutes before it was ready to be pulled off of the grill and let the sugars caramelize a little. From experience, you don't want to add the sauce onto a piece off meat until you are about ready to pull it off of the grill. You just burn off all of the flavor and end up using more sauce in to get that flavor back. Save your money and wait to sauce your meat.

I thought the chicken was really good. The meat was really moist and the sauce really went well with it. I'm thinking about using that sauce in the future as a dipping sauce for other things such as egg rolls or chicken tenders. I had cooked up some corn as well and it was very sweet and went well with everything we were eating.

Other people at the party brought food as well that I was able to sample. I tried the asparagus, beans and chocolate pie and enjoyed them all. We had a really fun fourth and enjoyed hanging out with friends and good food. It was great as well to beat the heat and jump into the pool.

Jenn cooked up some Cornish Game Hens the day before and I will try to write about that later tonight when I get a chance.

Posted by Gordon at 10:42 AM | Permalink