August 2006 Archives

Chilebrown is making pie:

I put in 11.5 hours at the Salt Mine yesterday to pay for Bacon and Charcoal and Beer. Today is the start of another grueling two weeks of R&R.

Waking up, I went to the backyard and picked some Gravestien apples and whipped up a pie. Now, I am going to head into Oakland and pick up my fresh pork belly. (Rind Off). I will have all the important food groups taken care off. I am hoping to smoke it with our custom applewood charcoal. YES!

A few tricks I learned about making pie crusts is to use super cold butter, and don't overmix it, because the little chunks of butter wil melt as the crust cooks, leaving little air pockets. This is what makes a good crust flaky and tender. Also, a friend years ago recommended replacing a tablespoon of water in the crust with vinegar, which gives it just a little extra zip, and I've been doing it since.

Nice pie, Chile! Paul also mentioned that he got a lot of compliments at the Apple Festival on his Desert Island Foods™.com "I can't live without it" T-shirt!

I wish I had a slice for breakfast. Where'e the ice cream????

I had a bunch of cherry tomatoes from a friend's garden, and decided to make some salsa with them. Even though the flavors intensify overnight, a fresh salsa (salsa fresca) is a refreshingly light accompianment to a healthy summer meal, or y'know, bust out the tequila and some chips and go for it!

I just quartered them and salted them, letting them sit while I chopped the rest of the ingredients. Tomatoes tend to release a lot of water, of course, so if you give them some time to mascerate at room temp, you can drain a lot of the water off before you finish the dish. I like to apply a bit of pressure to the tomatoes, giving them a gentle squeeze to help them along.

I added some chopped red onion for some good color, lots of cilantro, a minced jalapeno, though I like to use a few serranos when I have them on hand, a bit of garlic, lots of lime and lemon juice, and salt and pepper. How much of each? Taste as you go, keeping in mind that both the flavor and the heat will intensify over time. Lots of people will add a bit of cumin as well, use it if the mood grabs you, but be subtle.

Give it a good stir, and you're all done!

John in Chicago has sent along another interesting link to a NY Times article that discusses the latest in sauce trends and technology:

For some time now, Achatz has been experimenting with jellies to create “solid sauces” — thin, flavorful liquids given mass and viscosity through a variety of techniques. The sauces evolved, he explained, from a recent period using vegetable purées to accompany meats and fish. “I thought it would be interesting to turn a sauce into a purée,” he said. “To make a purée, you just stick a solid in the blender. The challenge was turning a liquid into a purée. To purée a liquid, I realized I had to turn it into a solid and then purée the solid.”

To create his solids, he works with different gelling agents, from gelatin to seaweed extracts like agar and carrageen. Achatz’s first solid sauce was a yuzu fluid gel, which he made by heating the fragrant citrus juice with agar, cooling it to set, then puréeing the resulting jelly into a puddinglike sauce, which he served with sugar snap peas, yogurt and ham.

I've mentioned Grant's restaurant, Alinea before, but still haven't eaten there while in Chicago. Oh well, one of these days...

What's your take on this stuff? The idea of melting a sheet of sauce over a dish instead of just spooning it on seems a bit over the top to me, especially if the customer doesn't get the visual gratification of seeing the process, but I guess it would create a very even glaze.

I'm out of town on a working vacation this week, so blogging will be a bit light, but I wanted to share an email I got a customer in Los Angeles recently:

Made a very good Desert Island rubbed tri-tip for the last night (smoked over Hickory and Wine Barrel oak.) Loving the new Weber my brother got me and finally getting the full carmelizing goodness out of your rub using it on a real grill instead of an oven...yum.

Tri tip is one of my favorite uses for Survival Spice™. It helps to form a beautiful crust, and really helps to help bring out the natural flavors. If you have the time, rubbing your tri tip generously, then letting it marinade in the fridge for a few hours or overnight will impart even more flavor.

Did you cook anything good this weekend?

Happy Friday, everyone! Janella, who's been dominating the Friday Funny entries of late, has sent in another good 'un to get us laughing into the weekend.

Enjoy yourself, and cook something good, willya? Please remember to contribute to Operation Gratitude by visiting the link in the sidebar.

Paul, aka Chilebrown, sent me this terrific picture of a turkey that he smoked on his Weber recently. He didn't send any information, but grilling or smoking a turkey on indirect heat is a great variation from traditional birds, though I recommend that you don't stuff them. Many times on Thanksgiving I've both oven-roasted and smoked a bird to provide variety, and the smoked turkey was always gone first. The leftover meat and carcass makes an awesome smoked turkey soup, too, try it!

This doesn't look rubbed, but our Survival Spice™ barbecue rub is awesome on turkey, chicken, and Cornish hens, too!

If Paul checks in, hopefully he'll provide some details, but I'd say this picture speaks for itself. Well done, Paul!

Who wants a burger? We had a cookout at a friend's house recently, and I whipped these Survival Burgers up. And yes, the way that I see it, a cookout is plain grilling- burgers, dogs, brats, etc. No smoke, no low and slow, that's barbecue, thankyouverymuch. Gas grills work fine for cookouts, but a handful of soaked wood chips makes a world of difference, try it. These were grilled by my buddy Tim, who did a great job of making sure everybody got the burger that they wanted, the way that they liked them cooked.

For these burgers, I started with 5 pounds of USDA Choice 22% fat beef, and about 2/3 of a tin of our Survival Spice™ barbecue rub, mixing it in with the beef. Nothing wrong with just sprinkling it on top, mind you, but if you're doing it ahead of time, it'll give it time to add some great flavors.

I like a fair amount of fat in my burger meat, because they basically become self-basting, the fat dripping through the meat on its way out. You end up with a moist, flavorful burger that really doesn't have much more fat that it would it you started with the 7% uber-lean beef that is remarkably similar to a hockey puck once cooked, especially if you proceed with the utterly charming "smash-the-crap-outta-it" technique with your turner.

Don't do that! What the hail's wrong with you?

Sorry. I'm sure there's some logic to pressing all the flavor out of a piece of meat that you paid good money for, but it eludes me. Want it crispy? Make it thinner. As you pat it out, let there be some gaps in the edges, then use a super hot fire. The thinner bits will have a nice crunch to them, but you'll still have a moist patty where it counts.

And if you're making burgers for a gang, take the time to carmelize some onions, or saute some mushrooms and sweet peppers, and seek out fresh tomatoes and lettuce. Nothing wrong with a basic burger, but don't let the condiments be an afterthought.

Burgers. I love 'em. You?

Wow, I'm totally addicted to these already. Definitely a great snack, and really easy.

I preheated my oven on convection roast at around 250º, while I put some mixed nuts I've been buying at Costco on a sheet pan, and gave them a light spray of some canola oil. I'm not sure this was necessary, because the oils in the nuts are released when they're heated, but for a first effort I wanted to do all I can to make sure the Survival Spice™ adhered to the nuts properly.

Once they were hot, I dumped them into a work bowl, added some Survival Spice™, and tossed. I'll be curious to see if the flavor intensifies over the next few days, if it doesn't I'll add more next time.

Oh, and there will be a next time. Definitely.

Try this! Especially if you're watching carbs.

It's going to be really busy around here for the next few weeks, but I'm going to post as much as I can for those of us who aren't on vacation, enjoying the rest of their summer!

This was sent in by Janella. Actually, it looks like it would work pretty well, but I'd buy a new rake if you were going to give it a try...

Have you ever had to improvise a kitchen gadget or create something for grilling? Let's hear about it!

Happy Friday, everyone! It's been a busy week around here, I haven't had a lot of time to cook anything worth posting, sorry about that- life in the real world, and all...

Mary, however, has cooked up a great Friday Funny for us, and delivered it piping hot.

Have a great weekend! Cook something good, will ya? Please mention our Two For the Troops promotion to anyone you see over the weekend, and ask them to help. It's a worthy cause, and I'd hate to fall short of our goal.

(Photo: Dr. Biggles)

Biggles, the Bay Area's foremost meaticologist, sent me an email the other day that he was nice enough to let me share:

Hay,

Got my dinner meez in to place and at the last moment found a
fresh tritip in the fridge I'd forgotten about. Today okay,
tomorrow it would have been tossed. It was huge too, so I
couldn't let it go or freeze it. So, I swapped out the other
beef ball-tip roast (tough life, I know) and Survival Spiced
(TM) the sob.

From drab to badass in a few moments.

Thank you sir.

Guy didn't mention how he cooked it, but you get the idea. I love tri tip, and our Survival Spice™ barbecue rub does a great job of adding awesome flavor and creating a great crust on grilled meats.

Thanks, Biggles!!! You da man.

I've mentioned this a few times now, but wanted to remind you that we're supporting our troops and Operation Gratitude by offering a special product for their holiday shipments to the troops overseas. For $7.99, you can buy two tins of Survival Spice™, normally an $11.98 value. We'll then ship, at our expense, your donated tins to Operation Gratitude to be included in the packages that they ship overseas.

You can get more information about this program here. As a reminder, there's also an ad in the right sidebar so you can order at any time! If you would like to add this sidebar ad to your blog or website, email me and I'll get send you the image and the underlying code.

Just to summarize:

• You personally will receive no tins if you order this product, you are donating them to Operation Gratitude.
• You can certainly order our regular products to be shipped to you in the same transaction as well.
• Operation Gratitude is a 501(c)(3) organization, so your donation of $7.99 is tax deductible.
• We respect your privacy and we never share customer information, so if you would like an acknowledgment of your donation directly from Operation Gratitude, just indicate this in the "Special Instructions" box during the checkout process, and we'll forward your name and email address to Carolyn, who created this wonderful organization.
• You can donate as many tins as you like!
• If you prefer to donate cash instead, you can donate directly to Operation Gratitude by visiting their website.

Whatever your politics, our troops are overseas, and sadly will be there for some time yet. Operation Gratitude's collections for the big holiday shipments will begin in a few months, and their goal is to put together at least 40,000 packages on their next drive. I'd like to include a tin of Survival Spice™ in every one, but I need your help!

Please, please pass this information on to your friends, family and co-workers and ask them to help.

Chilebrown's been up to his old meaty tricks again:

I think that is beautiful! Some people paint with a brush. I use Kingsford and Apple Chunks.

I've heard of artists working with charcoal, but this is over the top. Paul cured and smoked 14 pounds of pork belly, and this is the result. He's got BLT pictures to share too, along with an apple pie he made recently. No wonder he calls himself "Mr. Vacation"- great work, Paul!

If you've been cooking, email me! It doesn't have to be a masterpiece, it's just fun to see what everybody's doing in the kitchen and on the grill, no matter how simple or basic.

(The gravy is unusual looking, I'll admit, but tasty...)

Sometimes, I just like to make dishes up. Okay, I do it a lot, actually.

Part of what I love about cooking, other than the eating (of course), is starting a dish without a clear idea of how it's going to end. Having a clear idea of what you're making is naturally more efficient, and there's a certain comfort to knowing that you're going to have predictable results. This is particularly true when you've got company coming over.

There was none of that involved with last night's dinner, so why not 'take the gloves off' and make it up?

Happy Friday, everyone! This is slightly more risqué than most Friday Funnys, but it's really good. It was sent to me by Janella, so once again I doff my chef's hat to you!

Have a great weekend. I hope you cook up something good! Check out our recipe archives if you're looking for ideas, and please click on the "Two For the Troops" offer in the sidebar and make a contribution to Operation Gratitude by helping us include a tin of Survival Spice™ in the holiday gift packages they're sending to our troops overseas. Also, please help us spread the word!!!!

I took this picture in front of the chiminea by the pool. Chiminea's are a sort of ceramic outdoor fireplace, great for taking the chill out of the nighttime Arizona air during the winter. I'm looking forward to firing it up again soon!

Ribeye's are one of my favorite steaks- packed with flavor, and incredibly tender and juicy when cooked properly. I marinated this in worcestershire sauce, Colman's mustard, and tons of freshly ground black pepper, which enhances the flavor of the beef while adding a nice zip and depth of flavor. I grilled it, along with an ear of corn, over mesquite until medium rare.

I cook corn in different ways, depending on my mood and how many ears I'm grilling. Often I'll flavor the finished ears with butter and Survival Spice™, which does a great job of bringing out the natural sweetness. This time, though, I just peeled back the husk and removed the silk, removing the outermost husks. I then wrapped the corn up with one of the husks, tying a clove hitch to hold it together. Geeky, but effective...

A small green salad, and a nice bottle of Burgundy on the side. Big flavors, good times.

(Photo: from Wikipedia)

John in Chicago (thanks, John!) has passed along another interesting NY Times article about a fruit that I'd frankly never heard of that has become quite the rage in the food world:

There’s something about the mangosteen, amplified by its longtime unavailability, that has driven its devotees to obsession and hyperbole. Thus Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1902, entranced by the fruit’s mystique, “You’ll know what my riddle means / When you’ve eaten mangosteens.”

snip

“I’d love to be able to put them on the menu,” Sébastien Rouxel, the pastry chef at Per Se, said after tasting samples.

From Wikipedia:

There is a story, possibly apocryphal, about Queen Victoria offering a cash reward to anyone who could deliver to her the fabled fruit. Although available in cans and frozen, mangosteens are rarely sold fresh in Western countries except rarely in some Asian grocery stores; they are illegal to import without fumigation as whole fruit into the United States due to fears that they harbor the Asian fruit fly which would devastate US crops if it were ever introduced. In the future new irradiation techniques may allow importation of this delicacy. Products derived from the mangosteen are legally imported into the U.S. such as juices and nutritional supplements.

Has anybody ever eaten one?

Just to keep this fresh in your minds, and to again ask you to let your friends, family members and co-workers know that we're supporting our troops and Operation Gratitude by offering a special product! For $7.99, you can buy two tins of Survival Spice™, normally an $11.98 value. We'll then ship, at our expense, your donated tins to Operation Gratitude to be included in the packages that they ship overseas.

You can get more information about this program here. I'll be posting reminders, but just to be certain everybody's aware of this program, I've posted an ad in the right sidebar so you can order at any time! If you would like to add this sidebar ad to your blog or website, email me and I'll get send you the image and the underlying code.

Just to summarize:

• You personally will receive no tins if you order this product, you are donating them to Operation Gratitude.
• You can certainly order our regular products to be shipped to you in the same transaction as well.
• Operation Gratitude is a 501(c)(3) organization, so your donation of $7.99 is tax deductible.
• We respect your privacy and we never share customer information, so if you would like an acknowledgment of your donation directly from Operation Gratitude, just indicate this in the "Special Instructions" box during the checkout process, and we'll forward your name and email address to Carolyn, who created this wonderful organization.
• You can donate as many tins as you like!
• If you prefer to donate cash instead, you can donate directly to Operation Gratitude by visiting their website.

Whatever your politics, our troops are overseas, and sadly will be there for some time yet. Operation Gratitude's collections for the big holiday shipments will begin in a few months, and their goal is to put together at least 40,000 packages on their next drive. I'd like to include a tin of Survival Spice™ in every one, but until we can afford to do it on our own, I need your help!

TPC note: Oops, this didn't publish yesterday for some reason, sorry! Here's the post:

Okay, it's Monday. Let's make the best of it!

Here's breakfast from Sunday morning- forgive the alliteration, but it was good. A simple use of some leftover wild caught salmon I had grilled Friday night, with some organic brown eggs and green onions. Scrambled up with a touch of milk and some of our Survival Spice™ barbecue rub to add to what was on the salmon, and it was ready for some toast and jam.

How was your weekend? Cook anything good?

Here's another in a series of healthy, yet utterly delicious dinners I've been making lately.

The fish dish, Alaskan Halibut (thanks, Lloyd!) was lightly oiled and seasoned with Survival Spice™, then just coated with fresh bread crumbs mixed with more Survival Spice™. Fried over medium heat in a cast iron skillet with a squirt of lemon juice, it had a great crunch on the outside, and was nice and moist throughout.

As for the side dishes, I was craving pasta but didn't want the carbs, so instead I sliced red onion, Italian zucchini and yellow squash in thin, noodle-like strips and sauteed them in Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgene di Oliva and plenty of lemon juice. I talked about the Poolside Avocado Salad the other day, and the cilantro vinagerette I drizzled over the plate really gave it a nice fresh flavor, and brought the whole thing together.

The "noodles" were really a great alternative to my pasta craving, try it!

Happy Friday, everyone! I'm eyeing the door already, how about you?

This joke is a prescription for the Friday blahs, thanks, Mary! Email me your jokes to share, or a picture of a tasty dish you've made.

Thanks for reading! Please, please help us to continue spreading the word about our "Two For the Troops program, mention it at work to your co-workers and please talk it up to your friends and family and urge them to get involved. We're off to a decent start, but I won't be satisfied until we've really got the ball rolling.

As you well know, I've been eating a lot of veggie dishes lately. There have been days recently that as I posted a dish I could just feel the carnivores begging for a nice hunk of meat.

I've been jonesing too, I guess, so last night I grabbed this nice thick-cut pork chop, basically a pork porterhouse because it has a nice sized tenderloin attached to it, and heated up a trusty cast iron skillet. As the skillet got hot, I lightly oiled the chop and generously rubbed it with Survival Spice™, which gives pork all the lovin' it will ever need. I roughed chopped a red onion and sliced some regular white mushrooms, and other than prepping a simple green salad, I was good to go.

I wanted this to be simple so I did everything in the same skillet, but if you want a nice crust to your chop, the last thing you want to do is dump everything in at once. Other than the fact that your veggies would be done far too soon, your mushrooms in particular are going to release a lot of liquid, which would keep your chop from getting beautifully browned. And we love a nice crispy crust, don't we?

So, into the medium hot skillet the chop went, nicest side down. I gave it plenty of time to get nice and crispy, and to let the Survival Spice™ work its magic. Once I flipped the chop, I added the onions to give them a head start, then the mushrooms a few minutes later. The chop was done, so I transferred it to a plate and then topped it with the mushrooms and onions.

Oh man, was it good. Juicy, crispy, and tender, and wonderfully complemented with the veggies on top. Don't forget, I had a salad, too...

Our special "Two For the Troops" edition of the Desert Island Foods™ newsletter, Island Currents, is now up. Please check it out, and help us spread the word about this program!!! If your employer will let you circulate this information or get involved, so much the better. Operation Gratitude is doing such good work, and I really appreciate how hard they work to find individual soldiers that don't have anyone Stateside supporting them. If you can afford it, please visit their site and donate some cash to help with the overseas shipping, too.

We're thinking big here, and keeping the buzz going is so important. Thanks so much for helping, I won't go on endlessly about it here, but until it gathers the necessary momentum I'll mention it every few days.

Check it out, and if you aren't on the mailing list, which gives you discounts and special offers but NOT spam, go to our Desert Island Foods™.com main page, and click in the bottom right Newsletter section to subscribe.

We do not share our mailing lists with anyone.

We're working on a network problem over at Desert Island Foods™.com this morning. At the moment, we don't know exactly how long it will take to isolate, but a bunch of very talented people are swapping out switches, routers, and jiggling things.

Sorry! If you're trying to order "Two For the Troops", check back this afternoon sometime, we really appreciate your patience. The newsletter will still hopefully go out today, stay tuned!

UPDATE: Fixed.

Busy, busy around here today, but I wanted to share something I made as a side dish yesterday- an modified form of guacamole.

I don't know what made me do this- I was going to make traditional guacamole, but the avocado halves kept their shape and looked so great after I cubed them, I decided to just fill the cavity where the seed was with diced red onion, lemon juice, cilantro and some Survival Spice™. If I had fresh tomatoes, I would have done a concasse, but I didn't. Such is life, I guess.

I was generous with the lemon juice, and to give it another dimension I made some cilantro oil with a bunch of fresh cilantro, some Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgene di Oliva, which made it absolutely magical, and a little lemon juice and kosher salt. A quick drizzle of that, and it was good to go.

And it went. Quickly.