When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
We've lived in “the south” for 7.5 years now and my wife’s Grits game is *muah. She makes a mean Shrimp’N’Grits.
I took four lambs to butcher last week, two that were processed for family and friends. My take-home was 44 lbs of meat and this year I asked for the livers and hearts. Look for some adventuresome home gourmet posts from me in the near future!!
That looks outstanding! I don't really play with seafood at home because the fiancée doesn't like seafood, so no point in making two dinners for two dinners.
You'll likely see me start experimenting with a lot vegetarian dishes. Doc told me my cholesterol is too high.
That looks outstanding! I don't really play with seafood at home because the fiancée doesn't like seafood, so no point in making two dinners for two dinners.
I would imagine that this dish would work reasonably well with poultry in place of shrimp.
Originally Posted by z31maniac
You'll likely see me start experimenting with a lot vegetarian dishes. Doc told me my cholesterol is too high.
I don't have the culinary wizardy you do, but have a few cookbooks here that I'll start with.
Wizardry? Hah. I have no wizardry. Just patience, practice, and good web-searching skills.
I turned out some real dogshit dishes when I first started "seriously" playing in the kitchen around 2013. Got discouraged, stopped for a while, started again, stopped, started...
In the beginning, follow recipes. Exactly. This is how you learn.
Another vaguely KBBQ sort of dish. This one came out mighty fine.
I'd have preferred to start with thinly-sliced pork shoulder, but I couldn't get the kid at the butcher counter to slice one for me, and the pre-cut shoulder portions they had were way too large- I'd have wound up wasting a lot of meat.
So, 1.5 lbs ground pork. Two bell peppers. Two jalapeno peppers. One bunch scallion.
Start by soaking broad rice noodles in warm water, about 1 hour.
Chop the bell peppers, thinly slice the jalapenos and the scallions.
The red onion shown above was left-over from a previous night, and I wound up not using it.
Prepare a sauce (a blender or small food processor is nice here) consisting of (all measurements approximate):
½ cup tamari / teryaki glaze / soy sauce (your choice.)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1” of fresh ginger, grated
5 tbs honey
2 tbs tomato paste
4 tbs rice wine vinegar
1 tbs sesame oil
1 tbs Sriracha or similar
Ok. Skillet on high heat w/ stir fry oil. Work through the peppers in batches until slightly charred. Set aside. Reserve some of the jalapenos uncooked, for garnish.
Reduce heat to medium, and cook the pork, breaking into chunks. Drain the liquid from the pan, add the peppers, and about 2/3 of the sauce. Mix well, cover, simmer.
In another skillet, on high, stir-fry some of the noodles. You don't need to drain them, just keep 'em moving with some oil. Towards the end, toss in a handful of the scallions and a spoonful of the sauce. Mix well, and plate.
The raw jalapeno turned out to be just a bit much, but aside from that, this one's a member of the clean-plate club. Definitely worth doing.
As I mentioned a few posts back, we took four lambs to slaughter a couple of weeks ago. Even though these lambs were of the same blood line as the one we had processed last year, I was a little apprehensive because these were raised on different pastures then last go around. We moved earlier this year and the pastures at our new place aren’t nearly as good as the old place…a lot more weeds, a lot less grass. I guess weeds can change the flavor of the meat (at least I’ve heard that about beef cows).
So with a little trepidation I quickly cooked up some of the lamb chops to give the new lamb a test drive.
I didn’t really follow a recipe with these. It’s a simple preparation that is really just salt, pepper and garlic. We had some fresh Rosemary so that made an appearance as well. I sautéed some garlic in butter and olive oil while the skillet was getting stinking hot. The lamb was cooked just a couple minutes per side (these cuts were pretty small). After cooking the lamb, the chops were set aside to rest. I then added more butter and garlic to the pan and sautéed fresh green beans in the drippings. After the beans were done, I splashed some red wine into what was left in the pan and reduced to make a bit of a sauce.
I’m happy to say, this years lamb was every bit as delicious as before. Stonkin good
Thanks little buddy…
Last edited by Efini~FC3S; 11-23-2021 at 08:55 AM.
Reason: Because I don’t tolerate typos
Finally got around to doing a true holiday classic: Pad Thai.
The day before, slice a 1lb block of extra-firm tofu across the long axis into three sheets. Press dry. Dice.
Make a marinade of a few tbs each of soy sauce, honey and rice vinegar. Add about 1tbs of sesame oil and lime juice. Stuff into a 1 gal freezer bad and get it all nicely flattened out. Refrigerate overnight.
Thaw 1 lb raw shrimp.
Day 2:
Toss a handful of rice noodles into a soup pot with just enough warm water to cover. Let sit 1 hour.
Bake the tofu at 350° for 30 minutes.
Make a mix of fish sauce, sugar, tamarind paste, lime juice, rice vinegar sweet paprika, and Sriracha.
In stir fry oil in a skillet, fry the shrimps for 2-3 minutes per side, then reserve.
Place the soup pot with the noodles over high heat.
Scramble 4 eggs. Fry to scrambled. reserve.
Turn heat on the skillet up to high-ish, and put 1 can (drained) bean sprouts into the pan. Sear until wilted.
Turn the flame off under the noodles. Drain them. Return to the pot. Toss in the bean sprouts and the white parts of a handful of scallions. Let these cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes, turning frequently. We're trying to drive out some of the moisture from the noodles.
Once desired consistency is reached, add in the sauce. Mix well. Add in the shrimp and eggs, and mix well. Finally, add in the tofu, and mix very gently.
Plate, with ground peanuts and the green parts of the scallions.
Location: Detroit (the part with no rules or laws)
Posts: 5,677
Total Cats: 800
I put together a Christmas dinner yesterday for my dad, sister, her boyfriend and myself.
Simple simple. Cornish hens were really good. I'm reducing down the leftover bones and carcass for a stock right now. Yeah yeah, electric stove / oven. I want a convection so bad, but i also want to have a fun race season next year. Gots to compromise.
Been a while since I posted here. Longer still since I had carnitas. Decided to rectify both. And it occurred to me that this might make a good slow cooker recipe. Well... it does.
I did this as a two-day recipe, starting on a Sunday in order to spend the whole day smelling the wonderful aroma emanating from the kitchen, even though I still had two nights' worth of leftover Tuscan salmon. It's now Tuesday, so I'm ready to serve.
Start with a ~4lb hunk of pork shoulder, aka port butt. I bought boneless, so that I could easily slice it, across the grain, into enough pieces to completely cover the bottom of the crock pot. Wound up being about 1.5" thick.
In a bowl, mix up about 1/2 cup orange juice (I keep frozen on hand for such things), 1/4 cup lime juice, 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp black pepper, 1 tsp cinnamon,1 tbs oregano, and 1 tbs cumin. Mix that all around with a 8-10 cloves of crushed / minced garlic, and one finely minced fresno chili (can substitute 2 jalapenos if you can't find a fresno.)
Pour all of that over top of the meat. Put a few bay leaves on the top. Quarter an onion, and put that on top as well. Set the cooker to low, and let it rock for 10 hours.
Now, halve another red onion and slice it pretty thinly. A mandoline is handy here. Mince another jalapeno. Set all that aside
In a small saucepan, 3/4 cup vinegar (white, cider, whatever you have on hand), a few ounces lime juice, a spritz of lemon juice, 2 tbs sugar, 1 tsp salt, a few more cloves of minced garlic, and if you have it on hand, 1 tsp coriander seeds. Heat on medium and stir, just until the sugar is fully dissolved. Let cool to lukewarm, and then combine with the onion / chili mix in a sealable container. Refrigerate.
Once the pork is done, pick out the bay leaves and then carefully remove the chunks of meat with tongs one at a time, and shred with forks. Arrange the shredded meat uniformly on a baking sheet lined with foil. Reserve the liquid and the onion bits into another sealable container, for later use.
Place the sheet under the broiler, and broil on low for maybe 4-6 minutes, until it starts to crisp / blacken just a tad. Let cool to room temperature.
At this point, you can either serve, or wait a day or two.
Here I am two days later. Gonna take some of the shredded pork (which is very dry) and put it into a small saucepan along with a bit of the reserved liquid. Let that simmer, and get the tacos warm.
Plate.
And that's it. I've got enough pork here to last the rest of the week. Will probably experiment with putting it over rice at some point (with more of the liquid for the rice itself), and maybe fill a few empanadas with it if I get bored.
I can't tell what sort of tortillas those are from the photo, but if you're like me and like super thin flour tortillas instead of the thick precooked ones (Mission brand, etc.), Walmart carries "Tortilla Land" uncooked tortillas over in the cheese section, usually down at the bottom alongside some chorizo. They cook in a pan or flat top with no oil in about 45 seconds and are an absolute game changer for at-home tacos and burritos.
First, land yourself some yellowtail snapper. These are just above the size limit since my bigger yellowtail hole was full of chubs and I couldn't get any chum or bait past them. However, the smaller ones taste just as good and 1 day old fresh never frozen fish is as good as it gets. Obviously these will need to be cleaned.
Next, take whole clean snapper and cut some slits in it, add olive oil to an aluminum pan and to fish, throw on your favorite dry seasoning (or salt, pepper, and an aromatic), some lemon juice and a wedge or two. For the Cuban version of fish n chips, you gotta do tostones.
Not pictured, throw the fish in an oven, and I mean any oven. I've done the regular oven, the toaster oven, and lately I've been putting it on the BBQ grill. Heat it at around 400* for about 20 minutes til you can "stick a fork in it" and done. The tostones you fry in high heat oil once for five minutes or so, then smoosh and another five minutes or so. Salt them if you like but I prefer them natural.
Then get to work. This is my favorite way of eating yellowtail snapper. The meat on this fish is extremely soft and breaks apart all too easily. And if fried (breaded or not) the meat turns into basically a paste. Still good but not the same and is much better in sandwich form. I've heard some people describe it as flaky and I would highly disagree with that statement. This fish does not flake, it becomes puree. Also, being so small (min. size is 12" and 6" of that is head and tail) it means you eat more of it when whole. The last pic is what's left behind for the crabs. For those of you that have never had fresh caught fish, you will be blown away by the difference, especially when it comes to these types of smaller reef dwelling fish.
The salmon is per usual. Glaze is cider vinegar, soy sauce, lemon juice, honey, and a shot of crushed red pepper. I should have let it reduce a bit more in the skillet as it came out too runny to be photogenic, but the flavor was spot-on.
Tried something new with the stuffed mushrooms. In the past, I've put down some crumbled goat cheese and then topped it with something. But I was never really, 100% happy with the results.
This time, I softened a half block of cream cheese, and then added in minced roasted red peppers, crumbled bacon, and panko. (The total mass of all of the non-cheese ingredients, combined, being about equal to the mass of cheese.) Mix well, fill, and bake at 350° for 30 minutes.
This was an improvement in both taste and texture. I believe that this is how I shall approach stuffed mushrooms in the future.
I'm not sure that I expected anything different. Maybe I had a little bit of hope that they'd have some sort of texture, but they don't. Given that fresh cherries aren't available right now, it was either this or frozen.
Still, the flavors worked pretty well.
I managed to find a whole duck last week, so I cooked it up as a confit over the weekend. Shredded the meat, and now I've got a few days' worth of duck tacos.
Day 1 has a smear of guac at the bottom, then the duck, and then a salsa consisting of sliced cherry, diced navel orange (no seeds ftw), minced fire-roasted chilis, and a bit of diced onion, mixed with lime juice.
All in all, not bad. There's room for improvement, but I wouldn't be unhappy if I'd paid $12 for these plus a horchata off a food truck in the hipster part of town.
What with the duck taco extravaganza that's been going on at Casa de Perez for the past two nights, my internal monologue has been something along these lines:
(Braineack will understand.)
Anyway, I failed to document Salsa #2, but, well, it was peach salsa. Use your thinkey-noodle to imagine a chopped up peach, some minced jalapeno, etc.
Salsa #3, now that was interesting. Thinly slice a few radishes and a half a scallion on the julienne. Add some coarsely chopped mint leaves, some tarragon, and a dash of salt. Drizzle a tbs or so of honey over it, then enough lime juice to make it workable. Mix well.
11-17-2021, 08:08 AM
0
