I Like Food. Food Tastes Good!

This is my new coppa that was seasoned with juniper berries, mace,  salt and black pepper.  It dried in my drying fridge for 90 some days.  The color is wonderful.  The taste is even better.  I am so satisfied with this and can’t eat enough of it.  Click here for more info.

This is my second time making smoked bacon.  This time I cured the pork belly for about 8 days instead of the 7 days previously.  I think this extra day brought the salt level to where it should be.  I smoked it in my new smoker.  It is one of those cheap “R2-D2 type” charcoal smokers but I like it quite a bit.  It wasn’t that hard to maintain a consistent temp.  This time around I smoked it with hickory and mesquite chips.

So beef brisket is one of my favorite cuts of meat.  It requires very slow cooking to break down the muscle tissue.  I usually cook it in a very flavorful broth which usually includes a darker or more malty beer.  But you can use wine, stock, tomatoes and etc.  Most people brown the brisket then soften the aromatic veggies and spices and then simmer it on the stove top or cook in a low oven for many hours.  This is the process I use excluding the browning part.  It produces a nice flavor to the broth but it renders too much of the fat.  After the brisket is tender and has rested in the refrigerator overnight,  I reheat the brisket in the broth.  I then caramelize the fat either in a pan with some oil, on a grill or on a grill with smoke chips.  The caramelized fat gives the brisket so much more flavor than the normal browning process.

Pictured above is a braised brisket sandwich with caramelized fat and homemade bbq beans and homemade coleslaw.  I reduced the braising liquid to make a nice bbq sauce.  Delicious!

Homemade rustic bread made from the same dough that I used to make the pizza in the previous post.

and pan seared skirt steak with a peach and onion chutney and a cabbage roll stuffed with braised potatoes, cilantro, green onions, smoked paprika, star anise, soy sauce, oyster sauce, lime juice, clove and bacon fat.

So, I have made quite a few pizzas in the past couple years.  I make at least one homemade pizza every week.  I have read quite a few dough recipes, most of which are horrible.  They make the dough too complicated.  Sometimes they call for olive oil, bread flour, milk, and so on.  All you need for really good pizza dough and bread dough for that matter are 5 basic everyday pantry ingredients: water, all purpose flour(I prefer unbleached), salt, yeast and some kind of sugar(I use honey).  That’s it!  The process is even easier but it is usually that first step that scares people off….activating the yeast.  Oh, how we all hate having to do this but it is so easy.  Put the yeast in warm water.  How warm you ask?  Well, my rule of thumb is that the water should be a little below hand washing temperature.  So, warm but not hot.  Then put the warm water in your mixer’s bowl and add a tablespoon or so of yeast.  The more dough you make, the more the water/yeast proportion will make sense to you.  If your dough has huge air bubbles after it has risen you put too much yeast in. This mixture should start smelling yeasty and Read the rest of this entry »

I just checked on my salamis and coppas.  One of the fennel salamis were ready.  It is pictured above.  I took about 40 days for this one to dry.  It tastes wonderful!  Click here for more info.

I’ve said this before but I think it is worth saying again: flat iron steaks are amazing steaks!.  They are tender, moderately priced(5.99 per pound where I shop) and really really flavorful.  For more information about flat irons please click on this.  I have cooked flat irons in a variety of ways…I have broiled it, grilled it, fried it to make chicken fried steak, thrown it straight on hardwood coals and cooked it on a cast iron grill pan but my favorite way to prepare it is to cook it in a cast iron skillet over medium heat for 5 minutes per side with just a bit of butter, salt and pepper.  That’s it!   Most flat irons are right around a pound a piece.  I cut the piece in half a make two nice half pound portions.  Flat irons are usually prepackaged in your supermarket’s self serve case.

The dinner I made tonight(pictured above) took me 15 minutes to make.  I served the pan fried flat iron with some leftover jalapeno cheddar grits that I made into a cake and a lemon, horseradish and kalamata olive vinagrette.

Soft shell crabs are in season and tonight we picked up a few.  I dredged them in flour and then pan fried them in a little oil and butter.  They were nice and crunchy.  I served them with a corn salad with lime, mango, avocado, cilantro, jalapeno, sesame oil and oyster sauce.  On top of the crabs I squeezed some lime juice and sprinkled on some homemade bacon lardons.

I can’t get enough of the homemade bacon I smoked Friday.  Tonight I made some bacon and eggs with sauteed pea pods, onions and the leftover peach salsa from last night.

So I don’t usually cook a lot of loin steaks but the other weekend my work had strips on sale for $9.99 per pound.  I found some really nicely marbled steaks and had to buy them.  I mean at $9.99 plus my 20% discount, how could I not throw a few nice ones in my freezer.  Though, I do like skirt steaks, flat irons and even chuck steaks better.  Tonight I made a pan roasted top loin steak with a roasted peach and tomato salsa wih a cinnamon scented plantain cake.  I also served some sauteed snap peas with soy, lime and homemade bacon lardons.