I'm still full, but it's Friday! Time to muster up enough energy to post a funny that Julie emailed me, that, although not really her recipe, is funny enough to have been her's.
Have a great weekend, all! Send in your Thanksgiving pictures if you feel like bragging!
Oh, and buy some Survival Spice®! I'd be much obleeged.
Happy Thanksgiving from Julie and me! May your holiday be filled with great food, loved ones and gratitude. And great food. Did I say 'great food' twice? Yep.
For Julie's take on Thanksgiving, visit her blog which she writes under the nom de plume of "Candy Rant". She's always in character there, so she'll beat you like a drum if you call her Julie. Ms. Candy, if you must, to paraphrase Janet Jackson...
I've butterflied an 11 pound all natural turkey, and I'm marinating it in a large work bowl with chicken broth, orange juice, onion and fresh oranges, Survival Spice®, and some dried rosemary, thyme and sage. I'm going to grill it indirectly, as you've seen me do a lot, with a mix of charcoal, pecan and mesquite wood.
Sounds promising, doesn't it?
(Photo: Thanksgiving plate '06, Hope I can beat it!)
What are you cooking? It's raining here in Phoenix today, so I'm not sure I'm smoking the bird or roasting it. I am going to butterfly it either way, so it will cook more quickly.
In lieu of stuffing and mashed potatoes this year I'm making some kind of grilled/roasted sweet potato and butternut squash dish, and I'm making a fresh green been casserole with fried shallots.
And gravy. Gotta have gravy. Fortunately I made some chicken stock on Monday, so I'm good to go there, even if I don't get a lot of turkey drippings. I also made some fresh cranberry sauce with apples and oranges. I guess we're all set!
I made a big ol' batch of a childhood favorite recently, and basically binged on it for 4 days in a row. I used some long Chinese spaghetti that a friend turned me on to, which is great but really, really salty so I didn't even salt the water when I cooked it. I used some organic sauce with basil and garlic, and a pound each of ground beef and hot italian sausage. Glorious.
Y'know? If I had some right now I might make a pisketti sandwich. Ah, memories.
I whipped up a simple but delicious brunch on Sunday, just a quick scramble of some organic brown eggs with a bit of milk, tomatoes, scallions, yellow bell pepper, and some parmesan and asiago cheeses. Some homemade toasted focaccia and a bit of fruit on the side.
Poor Julie. Just as I plated this for her, I decided to run outside with it so I could shoot it in the sun.
That girl eats a lot of cold but tasty food...
Friday, again. Sweet, sweet Friday. It just seems like I pull a motivational charley horse on Friday mornings, and just limp through to the finish line.
You know what helps with that? Survival Spice®! Buy some for your Thanksgiving turkey!
And barring that, a string of great jokes helps, too! Thanks to KC for sending it in.
Have a great weekend, everyone! Cook something good, willya? Email me a few pictures of what you've whipped up, so we can all drool over them.
We love brocolli. Okay, I love brocolli and Julie likes it, but I think we've gotten a bit burned out on it lately. It's a staple around here- inexpensive, uber-nutricious, and very storage friendly in terms of one weekly shopping trip.
So, with what to replace our venerable stand by? The answer was not only in front of my face, it was on sale, the pasty sad looking cousin, cauliflower. I picked up a head and some potatoes, because I've been craving Indian food lately, and my favorite place is in Scottsdale, a bit ambitious for most weeknights, and besides, I've been meaning to try some of Fresh & Easy's jarred Indian sauces. I knew the korma sauce wasn't quite right, but it was plenty close enough for what I was going for.
I portioned the veggies, microwaved them individually until they were about 15 minutes of roasting time from being done, then tossed them well with the sauce and put them in a roasting dish in a hot oven with the chicken tikka and some garlic naan. Tossed them halfway through, and it was ready to serve.
Not the real deal by a long shot, but I beat the brocolli blahs, and that was victory in itself.
Get adventurous- try new stuff!!!
This is an easy version of the Indian classic Chicken Tikka Masala, using a sauce I picked up at Fresh and Easy. I made it in a totally unconventional way- first roasting chicken parts with Survival Spice® barbecue rub until it was nearly done, then cubing it and baking it in the sauce for 15 minutes or so.
Simple, and really good. I also made some aloo gobi and picked up some garlic naan, and I'll post that later.
Any Indian food fans out there? I'm going to dive into it more, but it's fairly pantry intensive, so the jarred sauce is an easy way to get started.
I saw an interesting primer on barbecuing a Thanksgiving turkey at ChefTalk today I thought I'd link to, in case anyone is new to the grilled poultry game. The mop idea is a good one, as long as it has enough fat in it to keep the bird from drying out.
BTW, our Survival Spice® barbecue rub is fantastic on turkey, if I do say so myself. And I do. Modestly, of course...
Anyone planning on a grilled bird for Turkey Day this year? I haven't even had a chance to think about it.
Update: Via Glenn Reynolds, a simple technique to butterfly a small turkey for the oven, which would also work well on the grill. Mark Bittman claims this technique on a smallish 8-12 pound bird only takes 45 minutes, which sounds good to me! I've showed this technique a lot, and it works really well.
Happy Monday, all. It's a busy day doing some site maintenance over at DIF that still isn't done, so this isn't much of a post today, I'm afraid.
Back to the geeky world of aspx and css. Whee!!!
Hey, it's Friday!!!! Time to start living again, for most, so let's get going with a laugh sent in by Don.
Thanksgiving is coming, so order some Survival Spice® to really make your turkey or ham something special!
Thanks for reading, see you Monday.
I threw together a quick calzone using some frozen dough for dinner recently, and it turned out great. It's a great way to use leftovers and whatever you've got on hand. In this case it was pepperoni, yellow bell peppers, scallions, mozzerella and provolone cheese, along with a little pasta sauce.
I really wish I could eat pizza every day.
("Y'know, pork roasts? Ya gotta kinda cook them just right or they get kinda leathery on ya.")
We've all dried out a few pork roasts in our day, and it's no fun to suffer through a jerky-like pork experience. To avoid that, I've been doing this larding technique for quite a few years now, but after searching through the archives I was surprised I'd never blogged about it before. Rather than go into it again, read this post about larding vs. barding from aways back in '05 to get my take on the difference.
Bottom line is adding fat to moisten a potentially dry pork roast is a fine idea, not that it's impossible to create a juicy, succulent roast by other means, far from it. But taking the opportunity to add some additional flavor as well is really a bonus.
I've done this with pork tenders and homemade chorizo, served with a pasilla cream sauce, with excellent results, especially with a professional casing filler at my disposal. Run a chef's steel through a pork tender, widen the opening a touch, then fill with the casing machine. Easy. But at home, what I decided to do is follow the side seam of a sirloin roast, butterflying it, then I added some hot Italian sausage and sealed it with a bamboo skewer along the seam, with a few bits cut off to seal the ends. Rubbed it well with Survival Spice®, or as I humbly (ahem) like to think of it, "the ultimate pork rub", and it was ready for the grill.
While I was working outside I cooked this directly, then indirectly with a combination of charcoal and dry hickory chips- not for smoke, just for flavor. I left it on the grill a bit longer than I would have liked, but it was terrific.
I was going to cook other stuff to go with this, but I blew it off. Can you blame me?
In addition to remembering our veterans, past and present, I hope you got to do a 'little horsing' around...
I mentioned BreadCetera.com last week, and the reason I stumbled on it in the first place was because I was looking for a focaccia recipe that was scaled down from the restaurant sized recipes I had, and I'm glad I did.
Search Steve's site for rosemary focaccia, and follow it exactly. If you don't have a gram scale, and you take baking seriously, you really should invest in one. I recommend using a really good olive oil, like our Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgene di Oliva because the flavor of the oil really makes the bread, but use what you've got otherwise.
It's a superb technique, and the poolish gives it tons of character. I've made it with a traditional wild yeast sourdough starter before, and I think I prefer this.
Going on some friend's recommendation, I toasted some the next morning and just had a bit of jam on it. No need for butter because the oil made it so rich. Magical.
Happy Friday, all! Thanks to Steve for the laugh at the end of a tough afternoon, I needed it!
Have a great weekend. Buy stuff! Or the jokes get it!
In a never ending quest for variety at dinner time, this is a quick meal idea that worked out great.
I cubed a turkey breast, then seasoned well with Survival Spice®, which is great with any poultry I've experimented with. Placed in a cast iron skillet, I cooked it at a fairly low heat (275º) until it was most of the way finished, then I added some barbecue sauce to the skillet and let it simmer until it was done.
I cranked up the broiler to crisp it up, and we had it with baked potatoes and a salad.
Try it with beef, chicken, or pork shoulder.
Interesting feedback from someone named Vasachi about the ZSweet post I did a while back:
I just received my order of Zsweet. First thing I did was open the container and taste it. It is almost as sweet as regular table sugar, hardly can tell the difference. I couldn't wait to make a pot of coffee to try it out. Normally I use 2 teaspoons of sugar in my coffee. It took 2.5 teaspoons of Zsweet to make my coffee taste the way it does when I use regular sugar. There is absolutely no after taste and no bitterness. I bought it in granular form next I will try the powdered form for baking. I am very pleased indeed. I just hope that down the road I don't find out it has something hidden in the "natural flavoring" that is not good for me. It has become difficult for me to trust any company making sweetners after the Aspartme lies. If anyone else has information regarding Zsweet please post it. Thanks and I hope this has been helpful.
Anybody else tried it?
Whatever side of the aisle you favor, please get out there and cast your vote today.
And buy some Survival Spice®, so you can have a tasty chicken in every pot!
What's the point?:
They didn't want to just shrink the Twinkie, known for its elongated shape, Leavitt said, so they created three, miniature round versions. Leavitt said people enjoy having multiple bites rather than just the one product."It's not some impostor like some portion control products would be," Leavitt said. "From that standpoint it eats like a Twinkie, it smells like a Twinkie, it tastes like a Twinkie."
He didn't disclose how they ensured that the new version kept the taste of the old one.
I would've posted a picture, but I don't have a photo attachment for my microscope... Actually, I was surprised to read that a regular Twinkie only has 150 calories.
