Batch #1 out; batch #2 is in. Results:
Cookin again
Dinner! My paternal aunt’s brilliant pot roast on buttered sourdough toast. Her gravy supplemented by Dijon mustard. Sammy’s pickle spears and a glass of V8 Bloody Mary mix with splashes of lemon & Worcestershire sauce rounded out the meal.
Damn near bit my fingertips off...
Damn near bit my fingertips off...
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doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
Made chili and country style ribs for my store’s Christmas potluck this month, and it was a hit!
I kept the chili simple this time.
Chili mix is home made bc the wife is allergic to garlic. Red curry powder, paprika, habenero salt, and a mix of red, white, and black pepper. No regular salt. I use low sodium soy sauce, and unsalted butter.
I mixed 1 lb each ground pork and ground beef, with olive oil, soy sauce, red wine vinegar, and chili mix. The ribs, I first score on all sides, then soak in a splash of soy sauce olive oil and red wine vinegar for maybe 15 minutes while doing some other prep like mixing the spice mix, and then thoroughly rub in the spices, working it into the scores I made earlier. Meat all rests like that for at least an hour.
I got diced 1/2 lb each white onion, celery, and green onion, and a package of chopped soup starter (more onion, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, some other stuff, and a handful of mushrooms I had to chop myself.
I put all but half the onions in the blender with olive oil, 1 jalepeno, a splash of red wine vinigar, and a splash of soy sauce, and puréed it.
Next, I heat up the pot on medium high with olive oil while I rinse my pinto, kidney, and black beans (1 can each bc I was lazy, 1 extra can of black beans) and get everything ready on the counter.
Thenits just drop in the chopped onions, then half the purée, and some of the chili mix. Once it gets aromatic, drop in the ribs, flip after a few minutes, drop in the rest of the purée and the ground meat, more chili mix, and stir that all up for a while until it’s going, lower the heat to medium, and start adding the tomato sauce (thick, tomato paste and as little water as possible, with a bit more soy sauce, and half a stick of butter), and then the beans, and more mix, keep stirring for a while, and then put that lid on and clean up the kitchen.
I always start with less water than I’ll need, so I can add a little at a time as it cooks, to be sure I don’t get a thinner chili than I want when the veggies and meat let out all their juice. I lower the heat to low after half an hour or so of cooking. I use heavy steel pots that retain heat very well, though.
I usually cook it on low like that for half the day, then let it cool, and then put it in the fridge. It’s best the next day.
oh! Also, I put a heaping tablespoon of unsweetened cooking cocoa in the mix! It rounds out the flavor and makes it more full bodied in the same way that it does for Mole.
I kept the chili simple this time.
Chili mix is home made bc the wife is allergic to garlic. Red curry powder, paprika, habenero salt, and a mix of red, white, and black pepper. No regular salt. I use low sodium soy sauce, and unsalted butter.
I mixed 1 lb each ground pork and ground beef, with olive oil, soy sauce, red wine vinegar, and chili mix. The ribs, I first score on all sides, then soak in a splash of soy sauce olive oil and red wine vinegar for maybe 15 minutes while doing some other prep like mixing the spice mix, and then thoroughly rub in the spices, working it into the scores I made earlier. Meat all rests like that for at least an hour.
I got diced 1/2 lb each white onion, celery, and green onion, and a package of chopped soup starter (more onion, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, some other stuff, and a handful of mushrooms I had to chop myself.
I put all but half the onions in the blender with olive oil, 1 jalepeno, a splash of red wine vinigar, and a splash of soy sauce, and puréed it.
Next, I heat up the pot on medium high with olive oil while I rinse my pinto, kidney, and black beans (1 can each bc I was lazy, 1 extra can of black beans) and get everything ready on the counter.
Thenits just drop in the chopped onions, then half the purée, and some of the chili mix. Once it gets aromatic, drop in the ribs, flip after a few minutes, drop in the rest of the purée and the ground meat, more chili mix, and stir that all up for a while until it’s going, lower the heat to medium, and start adding the tomato sauce (thick, tomato paste and as little water as possible, with a bit more soy sauce, and half a stick of butter), and then the beans, and more mix, keep stirring for a while, and then put that lid on and clean up the kitchen.
I always start with less water than I’ll need, so I can add a little at a time as it cooks, to be sure I don’t get a thinner chili than I want when the veggies and meat let out all their juice. I lower the heat to low after half an hour or so of cooking. I use heavy steel pots that retain heat very well, though.
I usually cook it on low like that for half the day, then let it cool, and then put it in the fridge. It’s best the next day.
oh! Also, I put a heaping tablespoon of unsweetened cooking cocoa in the mix! It rounds out the flavor and makes it more full bodied in the same way that it does for Mole.
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That.
Sounds.
AWESOME!
That unsweetened cocoa trick is gold, though! I would love to taste that. I bet it works a lot like some recipes I’ve seen where they add black tea or coffee as part of the flavor profile, giving a pleasant palate cleaning bitterness that is somehow familiar, but because of the context, is virtually unidentifiable.
Sounds.
AWESOME!
That unsweetened cocoa trick is gold, though! I would love to taste that. I bet it works a lot like some recipes I’ve seen where they add black tea or coffee as part of the flavor profile, giving a pleasant palate cleaning bitterness that is somehow familiar, but because of the context, is virtually unidentifiable.
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
You know, I did both once in a thanksgiving chili, but I’ve nevr tried it in a more normal chili! I’ll have to try coffee next time.
Fun quick tip, semi related. If you find yourself making chocolate pancakes, finely grind about half a tablespoon of coffee from whole beans, and mix it in. It enriches the chocolate flavor without adding more sweetness. Be careful if anyone at the table is sensitive to tannens, Ie if they experience coffee, chocolate, and red wine, as very bitter!
Even though we have pretty good grinders for our beans, I’d be a bit wary of adding ground coffee to pancakes, but I could see adding a reduction of brewed coffee.
Got a great reminder on why you might do things one way rather than another.
Mom likes fancy pizza. No, LOVES. Her fave of the past few years has been a combination of eggplant, artichoke, onions, Canadian bacon and shrimp that we get from a place around the corner. It’s...OK...to me. Eggplant, as I have mentioned before, is my defining line betweennveggies I dislike and those I like, so I can take it or leave it. And while I like artichoke, combining it on the pizza with the eggplant more often than not results in a soggy pizza. So while the flavor is acceptable, the texture rarely is.
Well, we were out & about delivering holiday gifts to people who had been out of town, and we stopped in another pizzeria, one local to our locale at the time. We both kneW the place, but it had been a while. She wanted pizza, and I hadn’t had pizza there since 2017, either, so we tried to order her fave. But they didn’t have artichoke, so we subbed black olives.
The result: a pizza I could definitely say I liked. The difference lay in the following factors:
1) it was eaten in the parlor, not takeout, so the pizza didn’t have time to steam itself.
2) black olives have a similar saltiness to, but are not as moist as, artichokes.
3) instead of using large shrimp, they used those tiny popcorn shrimp.
4) instead of cubing the eggplant, this pizzeria sliced it very thin, which allowed it to crisp up a bit in the oven. They also seasoned their eggplant a bit more than the place near us.
The pizza we got was nowhere near soggy. The crispier, more heavily seasoned eggplant was actually a plus to the experience instead of merely being there.
And the smaller shrimp? I usually avoid those, preferring to use the larger ones that I feel have a stronger flavor for most applications. That’s what our local pizzeria does, as well. But here, the smaller shrimp had- like the eggplant- a different ratio of seasoning to its substance AND less moisture. The shrimp browned up a bit and delivered an overall bigger impact than the larger shrimp our local place uses.
Because of those little differences, that place got elevated to being one of our go-to eateries in the area, alongside one of the better creole restaurants in the Dallas area.
Mom likes fancy pizza. No, LOVES. Her fave of the past few years has been a combination of eggplant, artichoke, onions, Canadian bacon and shrimp that we get from a place around the corner. It’s...OK...to me. Eggplant, as I have mentioned before, is my defining line betweennveggies I dislike and those I like, so I can take it or leave it. And while I like artichoke, combining it on the pizza with the eggplant more often than not results in a soggy pizza. So while the flavor is acceptable, the texture rarely is.
Well, we were out & about delivering holiday gifts to people who had been out of town, and we stopped in another pizzeria, one local to our locale at the time. We both kneW the place, but it had been a while. She wanted pizza, and I hadn’t had pizza there since 2017, either, so we tried to order her fave. But they didn’t have artichoke, so we subbed black olives.
The result: a pizza I could definitely say I liked. The difference lay in the following factors:
1) it was eaten in the parlor, not takeout, so the pizza didn’t have time to steam itself.
2) black olives have a similar saltiness to, but are not as moist as, artichokes.
3) instead of using large shrimp, they used those tiny popcorn shrimp.
4) instead of cubing the eggplant, this pizzeria sliced it very thin, which allowed it to crisp up a bit in the oven. They also seasoned their eggplant a bit more than the place near us.
The pizza we got was nowhere near soggy. The crispier, more heavily seasoned eggplant was actually a plus to the experience instead of merely being there.
And the smaller shrimp? I usually avoid those, preferring to use the larger ones that I feel have a stronger flavor for most applications. That’s what our local pizzeria does, as well. But here, the smaller shrimp had- like the eggplant- a different ratio of seasoning to its substance AND less moisture. The shrimp browned up a bit and delivered an overall bigger impact than the larger shrimp our local place uses.
Because of those little differences, that place got elevated to being one of our go-to eateries in the area, alongside one of the better creole restaurants in the Dallas area.
I’ma juss leave dis heah...
I got off to a late start on cooking tonight. As of this posting, I just put my food in the fridge. What did I cook? Pork pot roast.
On a mid-sized Dutch oven, I sautéed 3 ginormous yellow onions, a few clusters of green onions, 4 stalks of celery, and @1 bulb’s worth of garlic in a mix of salted and unsalted butter. Removing those from the pot, I put in a salted and peppered pork butt that I partially removed from the bone and cubed (big chunks), cooking until they showed some brown. Then I removed the meat, quickly deglazed the pan with part of a can of chicken broth, then added the onion and meat back in with most of the rest of the broth. I covered the pot and brought the contents to a boil, then turned it down.
After I could kind of shave the rest of the meat off of the bone, I added a little more salt and pepper, a LOT of dried parsley and a can of cream of mushroom soup. I let that cook down a bit.
Surprisingly, my tasting of the end result revealed it was buttery, oniony and porky. This will be very good over rice tomorrow, after the flavors have some time to mix overnight. Perhaps I will take pix then, maybe not. After all, it’s a green-flecked brown liquid with brown meat chunks. It smells- and tastes- far better than it looks!
On a mid-sized Dutch oven, I sautéed 3 ginormous yellow onions, a few clusters of green onions, 4 stalks of celery, and @1 bulb’s worth of garlic in a mix of salted and unsalted butter. Removing those from the pot, I put in a salted and peppered pork butt that I partially removed from the bone and cubed (big chunks), cooking until they showed some brown. Then I removed the meat, quickly deglazed the pan with part of a can of chicken broth, then added the onion and meat back in with most of the rest of the broth. I covered the pot and brought the contents to a boil, then turned it down.
After I could kind of shave the rest of the meat off of the bone, I added a little more salt and pepper, a LOT of dried parsley and a can of cream of mushroom soup. I let that cook down a bit.
Surprisingly, my tasting of the end result revealed it was buttery, oniony and porky. This will be very good over rice tomorrow, after the flavors have some time to mix overnight. Perhaps I will take pix then, maybe not. After all, it’s a green-flecked brown liquid with brown meat chunks. It smells- and tastes- far better than it looks!
Tonight, I had a very late lunch with Mom, so when I decided I needed one more meal for the day, it was prudent to eat lightly. So I created what I’m calling...Multicultural Quesadillas:
I took some garlic naan, warmed it, and halved it. On one piece, I spread some labneh, then placed a layer of sliced Campari tomatoes on top of that. On the other, I smeared a generous layer of guacamole, which I then folded on top of the first piece.
It was a surprisingly filling vegetarian snack, and the flavor was thoroughly yummy. That buttery, garlicky flavor of the naan played well with the yogurty tang of the labneh and the citrus & spice of the guac. The tomatoes provided a n essential juiciness.
I must admit I missed a trick, though, by not using some of the salsa we were given for a Christmas gift.
I might try some sautéed mushrooms in there in the future.
I took some garlic naan, warmed it, and halved it. On one piece, I spread some labneh, then placed a layer of sliced Campari tomatoes on top of that. On the other, I smeared a generous layer of guacamole, which I then folded on top of the first piece.
It was a surprisingly filling vegetarian snack, and the flavor was thoroughly yummy. That buttery, garlicky flavor of the naan played well with the yogurty tang of the labneh and the citrus & spice of the guac. The tomatoes provided a n essential juiciness.
I must admit I missed a trick, though, by not using some of the salsa we were given for a Christmas gift.
I might try some sautéed mushrooms in there in the future.
