Well the other thought that crossed my mind is the fact that we're pretty much at opposite ends of the Mississippi too, right? Maybe the critters have significantly different diets in your area and that is a factor.
Ha, yeah, I'm not near the Mississippi at all, now. I think we get the old, retarded, disabled Canada geese here in Georgia, that aren't smart enough to find their way to the rice fields of Arkansas and Texas.
HA that's right... well either way the point was thinking those birds are pretty much at opposite ends of the nation from North to South. Haven't tried any snows or specks yet too, for that matter. On the subject of waterfowl, my girlfriend and I went to a nice restaurant in my neighborhood this past weekend and left very happy. Tried a beef tenderloin carpaccio as an appetizer, since neither of us had tried raw beef yet and we were glad we did. I got lamb chops (delicious) and m'lady ordered the duck breasts, which were served with pineapple chunks and a red wine reduction. The duck and pineapple together was new to me and delicious. I knew other meats (like pork in particular) are really good with it but I hadn't considered fowl. Gotta try that myself now.
My favorite appetizer, hands down. I ALWAYS order it when I see it on the menu, regardless of if it goes with whatever else I am getting. It was one of the first "weird" dishes I ever tried as an adolescent, I know I was barely a teen if even that. I've only had bad carpaccio once, at a nice bistro on the Champs-Elysees -- it was cut to roughly the length and thickness of string cheese; as a french place, they had no excuse for what they did. Every other time, it's been heavenly.
PSA: If any of you are popping popcorn in anything other than hot chili oil, you are doing it wrong. I had stuffed a bunch of dried hot peppers in a half-full bottle of olive oil and topped it off with sesame oil, with intentions of using it for stir fries. While it's a totally reasonable addition to a stir fry, it makes popcorn magically spicy and delicious and amazing. Bonus points for tossing in a little tamari or soy sauce instead of salt. Is making popcorn cooking? Not really. Has everyone tried this and I'm just late to the party? Maybe. But I'm drunk and spicy popcorn is my new favorite snack.
Took some time to put together a nice dinner for the family tonight. I made a set of roasted beets, asparagus puree w/ blood orange and caramelized scallops. I was surprised by how well the beets went with the asparagus/blood orange, since when I've made the recipe before, I usually pair the asparagus with lemon instead of the oranges. I'd never used beets either, instead using yams in the past, but I think I'll be going with beets more frequently in the future. PREP For the beets, preheat the oven to 350. For each individual beet, place it in the center of a square of aluminum foil, sprinkle it with salt and pepper and a drizzle of oil (canola, grapeseed, avocado, olive oil if nothing else), wrap the foil towards the top of the beet and twist the top of the foil so that you seal the beet inside like a Hershey's Kiss. Cook in the foil for 40-60 minutes depending on the size of the beets -- they're finished when a knife can pass through them, just like a potato. After the beets are finished baking, you can let them sit in their foil for 10-20 minutes while you put everything else together. For the asparagus puree, bring a pot of water to boil and make it, literally, salty as the ocean. Make sure to cut off the bottom quarter of the asparagus in order to get rid of any fibrous, woody parts. Blanche the asparagus in the water for 3-4 minutes, until you can take a bite of the bottom where you cut the woody part off and it's tender, but crisp. As fast as possible, remove the asparagus from the hot water and cool in an ice-bath//running cold water. The idea is to stop the asparagus from cooking once it's reached optimal consistency. Once the asparagus is cool, you have two options. For the basic recipe, just dice it up and blend the fuck out of it. Add as little cold water as possible to the blender when you make it in order to make it a nice puree. If you want to kick it up a notch, you can slice off the asparagus tips and then sautee them in butter, since the tips will crisp up much more readily than the thicker stalks. Up to this point, you can make and refrigerate the asparagus puree and the asparagus tops. When I have leftovers, I often use the tops in a frittata or stif-fry of some kind since they are already cooked and seasoned nicely. For the scallops, heat 2 cups of hot water on the stove, and add a cup of kosher salt to it once it's hot. Once it's dissolved, pour the 2 cups of salt water into 8 cups of cold water. This is the brine for your scallops. Place your scallops in the brine for 10 minutes (any longer and they will get too salty). Take the scallops out of the brine, place them on paper towels and then pat them dry. Sautee them in as high a heat as you are able with clarified butter (1st preference) or another high heat oil (grapeseed, canola, avocado). Add the scallops to the oil once you see currents shimmering across its surface/it begins to smoke. Make sure the scallops do not touch each other otherwise they will not caramelize properly. Once you put them in the pan, let them sit there for 2-3 minutes until golden-brown on the bottom. Flip once they are sufficiently browned on the bottom and release easily from the bottom of the pan. FINISH Heat the asparagus puree in a saucepan and add unsalted butter to taste. The asparagus should taste well-seasoned after it's been cooled, and should require a small amount of salt once the butter is added to be seasoned properly. You'll want some sort of citrus juice to add to the asparagus puree at the last minute (once you add the citrus, the nice green color of the puree turns a dirty green color, so you want to add it at the last possible moment for best presentation). For the asparagus tips, reheat in butter until crisp. While you heat the asparagus tips and the puree, sautee the scallops. Don't worry about overcooking the asparagus, if you see it getting too hot, just turn down the heat and keep it warm. Remember, you already cooked/seasoned the asparagus, so all you're really doing is reheating it to pair with the fresh-sauteed scallops. Place the asparagus puree on the bottom of the plate, place the scallops in the center of it. Arrange the asparagus tips as you see fit. Cut the beet/beets into quarters and arrange on the plate. Bam! Scallops, Asparagus and Beets.
Tons. What are you looking to start with? I recommend a Boston Butt if you haven't had any experiance with smoking.
I cooked these up for one of my friends this week and they were awesome. Start with a shallot and some garlic and simmer in butter until they start to brown, I then add half a bottle of cheap chardonnay, 3 cups of chicken stock, a stick of butter, chopped basil and some green onion along with some ancho pepper and tabasco and salt and pepper to taste. When it comes to a boil I dump in the clams and cover until the clams start to open then dump into a bowl and eat. Do not over cook clams, once they start to open get them off of the heat because the soup they are in will finish cooking them. After we ate all the clams I put the soup back on the stove and got it to a boil and then put it back in a large bowl and threw in some shrimp.
Making bread at home is delicious. But making bread at home in a cast iron skillet is fucking heavenly.
Just got my bread machine out of storage. I don't use it to make the bread itself, but it's fantastic for making dough. It'll mix everything, warm things up for a nice timed rise, and do everything you need to make awesome dough. You can throw the stuff in there and come back in 8 hours to fantastic results. Then it's just a matter of cutting/forming it up into buns/rolls/loaves, letting it sit for a few minutes, then baking it in an oven... which is always way better than letting it bake in a bread machine. Once you get the basics down, it's really easy to expand into more "artisinal" bread. I've had great results with adding various hot sauces/peppers to the dough to make rolls that go well with chili, or nice herbs for pasta or turkey or a whole bunch of things.
The second loaf I did today, I made with heated champagne instead of warm water. Then I topped with roasted lemon zest (had the lemons in the skillet while it was seasoning in the oven) and hand cracked peppercorns. I'll update with pictures in a bit. It tastes like a fantastic first date.
I made grilled chicken and steak tacos last night. Just seasoned the steak with simple salt and pepper but I bathed the chicken in a mix of spicy brown mustard, El Bufalo chipotle sauce, and John Henry's Mojave Garlic Pepper spice- and hot damn did that combo do the job with the smoky charcoal flavor. As much fun as elaborate dishes can be, you gotta love something as simple as a corn tortilla topped with meat, onions, and cilantro with lime juice and hot sauce drizzled it all. Quick and easy and cheap. My girlfriend has been making tostadas with ground turkey for a little healthier eating and I love them too. She likes to top them with shredded broccoli and it works well.
Just made some buttermilk biscuits that were hard to beat. - Mixed two cups flour, 3 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 tablespoon sugar. - Added 2 tablespoons shortening (crisco) and 2 tablespoons butter. - Mixed the dry ingredients with the shortening and butter by hand until it has the consistency of bread crumbs. - Added 1 cup buttermilk, mixed with a spatula until it all mixed together. It will be very sticky. - At this point I pre-heated the oven to 450. - Put the dough on a lightly-floured surface. Flatten it out, put a little more flour on top, then keep folding it over on itself about 8-12 times. - Once you finish, flatten it out to about an inch thick and cut out circles. I didn't have a cookie cutter so I just used an upside down rocks glass. - On a lined baking sheet, put in the oven at 450 until the top of the biscuits are golden brown. It only took me about 10 minutes, but depends on the oven.
Great article about Peter Chang, anyone interested in Chinese cuisine will enjoy it http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle ... 1e58a8cc36
So as part of the quarter cow I just got, I was the only one that wanted the liver. Fine, I enjoy me some offal every once in a while. Problem is, the took it and sliced it down into long thin strips as opposed to keeping it whole. So now I have no idea what to do with it. My thought is to maybe grind some of it down and mix it up with some of the ground beef and some ground pork and make some meatballs, but past that, not sure what to do. Any ideas?
You could make liver kebobs. Go with a nice Moroccan style dish. Have you ever had beef pate? Mix some wild mushrooms in with it. The possibilities are endless.
So I'm sick of my shitty flaking college teflon coated pots and pans. What are your recommendations for must have sizes and brands I should be looking at? Cost isn't too huge of a factor if they're quality and will last. Bought my own place last year, so now I don't have 2 roommates' worth of kitchen stuff available. I have a cast iron pan, crockpot, KitchenAid mixer, nice baking sheets, a good chef's knife which has served me pretty well. Just looking to get a more complete kitchen. Suggestions and recommendations rewarded with rep and/or inappropriate pictures via PM.
I have a porcelain frying pan which is ridiculous. Cleans easy, cooks just as well as anything else. Bed, Bath, and Beyond sells them. As far as pots go, a basic stainless steel is good. My teflon ones rusted and I inherited my uncle's 30 year old suckers. Work just fine. They were probably bottom of the line back then, too. A stew pot and a sauce pot are necessary. I never use anything else.
Here in Canada we have a hardware store chain called Home Hardware, and they carry the Paderno line of ceramic pans. They can be ridiculously expensive (as in around $200 a pan), but every year they put them on clearance for up to 80% off. When that happens I generally load up on a few of them. I can fry an egg on high heat without oil, and it won't stick, only burn. Nice thing about the Padernos is that you can also put them in the oven without melting or damaging anything. Would highly recommend. When it comes to pots, there are two basic kinds; thin-walled soup pots, and heavy-walled dutch oven type pots. I would generally lean towards the heavy pots because you'll get way more even heating, whereas the thin pots will have crazy hot spots and will easily burn anything other than liquid. The thicker and heavier the better... enamel coated cast iron are great, but can be expensive if you go for the old-school name brands like Le Creuset. They can hit $400 a pot. That being said, a number of celebrity chefs have been doing their own line of those, for pennies on the dollar. I have a couple of the Wolfgang Puck pots and they work just as well as the Le Creuset pots I have. For that matter, you can go to a local camping supply store or Cabellas.com and grab yourself a big cast iron dutch oven or pot for cheap and season it yourself... more work, not as pretty, but cooks exactly the same... the enamel coating just makes it easier to clean. if you're starting out, this is the list I'd go with to be adequately equipped to handle just about any cooking you want to do. This is based on me cooking for 1-4 people. cast iron frying pan for steaks/chops/fish/etc, that you can use on the stove top and then transfer to the oven when needed. If you're only getting one, get a flat-bottomed, if you're getting a second, get a grill pan (with the raised ridges on the bottom). a big and small ceramic frying pan for things like eggs, risotto, seafood, and other "fragile" things you want to cook and need non-stick for. (If you're just learning to cook, be aware that burnt food is flavour, so in most cases if you use non-stick, you're robbing your meal of flavour bites... learn to sear and brown and get that crust on a pan and then deglaze it.) a medium sized, thin-walled soup pot (or two) that you'd use to make soup, boil potatoes/pasta, mussels, lobster, etc. a steamer for veggies... don't boil them, steam them. World of difference, and you're not boiling the nutrients out of them. It also removes veggies from the stove top, freeing up room for more "good" stuff. a big (as big as you can afford) heavy dutch oven to make stews, chili, braising, etc. Something you can fry meat in on the stove top or slow-cook in the oven. The kind of pot you need two hands to lift. a big wok-like pan. I have a big cast iron bowl that used to be my great-great-grandmother's that she brought with her from Scotland, and she cooked everything in it... and I do 80% of my cooking out of it as well. Whether it's making a small, single-meal soup, stir fries, curries, browning meat, etc., it's convenient as hell. $0.02
The only other thing I'd recommend is getting a reasonable set of knives and learning how to sharpen and use them. They don't need to be expensive, just sharp. When I say "reasonable", I mean variety... learn when to use a chef's knife vs a paring knife vs a cleaver, etc.