Category: cooking

September 12, 2023 – Salt, Pepper and Garlic

September 12, 2023 /

There are all kinds of ideas about beef, particularly steak. I think about herb butter or Montreal seasoning to barbeque rubs. One theory that I subscribe to is Samin Nosrat’s ‘salt early, earlier is better’. But, the one tried and true recipe I use is salt, pepper and granulated garlic.

It’s freezer prep time. Last weekend, my neighbors gave me eight pounds of bear meat. They are planning to need room soon. I have been moving this beef head around for almost two years, that is way too long. There was a small amount of freezer burn that I trimmed off. The truth is, that in a month or two, I will probably have another head to store. So, I decided to make this over labor day weekend.

If I had a choice, I probably would skip the head altogether. But, it is our duty as parents and people to carry out cultural traditions and this is one that my wife enjoys. I begrudgingly pick-up the head, clean it and store it until such time that I cook it and we eat tacos. My preference by far and away is the tongue over the cheeks, but I can deal with it once every couple of years.

I was watching some videos recently to see if there were other preparations that I might like better. When I was talking about some of the things I learned, my wife forcefully said no. “Only salt, pepper and garlic that is the way that my grandparents did it.” So, that is what I did. I just rub the outside and pretend that you can get close enough to such a large volume of meat.

This is probably my fifth or six one that I have done. It is hard to remember everything when you only do it once every couple of years. That being said, I have made a lot of different mistakes over the years. The first one is make sure the head is clean. I spend a lot of up front time trying to get the grass out of the mouth and throat. I only made that mistake once.

The second one is there is a lot of mass there. Make sure there is plenty of defrost time. This year, I took it out of the freezer on Wednesday and cooked it on Saturday, but there was still ice along the bottom. Hence, cooking took much longer and still there were parts that were not as done as they should be.

Since the whole head contains a lot of gristle, the preferred method is low and slow. It is hard to do that in eight hours when it is still frozen. Also, most preparations include a braising component. I modified it by chunking up the meat and adding water to the skillet after it was 80% cooked. An hour of extra cooking did a lot to homogenize things but kind of ruins the romanticism of unwrapping the cooked head.

I wish that I had thought of taking pictures of the final product. Something about waiting three extra hours to eat and having people waiting on me made me to forget to do what I wanted. The tacos are simple, corn tortillas, onion, cilantro and the salsa of your choice. Don’t forget to taste the meat for salt before serving.

End Your Programming Routine: As I said, this is my go to preparation for beef. It is pretty much the only thing I do for steak. You can save all the Cajun seasoning, seasoning salt and all that stuff for chicken. Keep it simple for the best results.

August 24, 2023 – My Wife Brought Me a Real Estate Newspaper and I Found Something Else

August 24, 2023 /

My wife has brought back a newspaper advertising homes in France. I cant really read French but I can figure some things out. I can understand cost in Euros and I can see size in square meters. As with all vacations, she is enamored with the place and it doesn’t hurt that my new company is French.

I was just paging through and at the end, I saw something that caught my eye. A recipe for Beef Burgundy. This was a recipe made famous in the USA by Julia Child back in the 1960s. I have made a couple variations of this myself. So I set about figuring out the words that I didn’t understand.

I am assuming that you don’t speak French, so I will translate into English with imperial units.

  • 2.5 lbs chuck roast, cut into 1.5″ chunks
  • 0.5 lbs bacon
  • 2 onions, chunked
  • 2 carrots, chunked
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • Bundle of herbs, (Thyme, Bay Leaf, Parsley)
  • 1 bottle of Pinot Noir (or French Burgandy)
  • 2 tablespoons flour
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • Salt and Pepper
  • 1 lb mushrooms
  • 4 tablespoons butter

For the most part, it looks like a classic ingredient set. I think that maybe the herb combination might be a little different but I could easy see this variation in any cookbook. Ingredients are of course important but technique is imperative. I am going to summarize the instructions.

  1. Brown the bacon in a dutch oven (use oil here as well). After the bacon is rendered remove.
  2. Brown the beef chunks.
  3. Remove the beef and add the onions and carrots to soften.
  4. Add the flour to the remaining fat.
  5. Add the garlic, herbs and wine. Mix until everything is well distributed.
  6. Add back the meat and simmer for two hours. Sauce should be thick.
  7. At the end of the simmer, quarter the mushrooms and fry in butter
  8. With thirty minutes remaining, add mushrooms
  9. Salt and pepper to taste.
  10. Serve over mashed potatoes or pasta and red wine.

Technically, I didn’t translate the instructions word for word. I used my knowledge of technique with select words. So, if you speak French and I am wrong, please correct me. I am going to be making this as the weather cools.

End Your Programming Routine: I don’t think the universe is calling me to move to France. However, I am pretty sure it is calling me to make Beef Burgundy. It is something that I haven’t done in a couple of years. But first, there is going to be one last summer fiesta something I am going to write about in a couple of weeks. This is a simple inexpensive dish that you can impress your friends if you can pronounce the dish in French (Boef Bourguignon).

August 22, 2023 – Garbage Salad

August 22, 2023 /

I am being a lot sensational. It is not really garbage, but a bunch of things left over in the refrigerator. A couple of weekends ago, we had a family reunion and I needed to make something to take. I didn’t want to invest much in cooking and I really didn’t want to go to the store to buy ingredients. I also wanted to make something that would use things wife wouldn’t eat. Finally, I wanted it to be vegetarian so that if we had leftovers, my son would eat it.

We wax and wane some on gluten. I don’t really believe that anyone should eat it in significant quantities due to the inflammation response that it causes. But, some people tolerate it better than others. And, my wife has recently declared that she was no longer eating gluten so I thought that I would make pasta salad.

Salads are a good vehicle to use up all of those tidbits of things. I am sure that your refrigerator is similar to mine where the one time you made the anti-pasta platter, you have one third jar of olives left over. Well, I have three different jars one third full. I had a small bit of onion, feta cheese, yellow pepper and some dried cherry tomatoes I made a couple of years back.

A bit on onion. I used yellow onion because that is what I had on hand. I think a red onion would have been better but don’t get too hung up on the ‘right’ onion. As long as it is not a featured part of the dish, it is going to be OK. In fact if you want, don’t even put it in the salad if you are that worried about it. If you think it is going to go well, then go for it.

Sometimes I use yellow onion in substitute for green onion and sometimes the other way around. White is distinct and works best in Mexican but I will use that in place of yellow onions. So, use what you have and do what you feel. Best is always best but that doesn’t mean it will be almost as good. I certainly didn’t think my yellow onion impacted the salad.

I mixed the pasta and the garnishes. Now, it was time to make the dressing. I wanted something Mediterranean so that is oil, vinegar and herbs. I also wanted to keep it on the surface of the pasta so I wanted to emulsify the oil and vinegar. I chose the remaining mayonnaise and added some leftover whole grain mustard.

I have a similar take on vinegar as onions. Red or white wine vinegar is best but I would have used cider vinegar or distilled as well. I probably wouldn’t use balsamic, but who knows, maybe that would work too. It would be an interesting experiment.

I used thyme, oregano and parley for herbs. I love oregano in a vinegrette. However, mine is really tough, so maybe I should have focused on mincing rather than a rough chop. I also would have added basil if I had it, The parsley was mostly for looks rather than taste as it gets washed out with the stronger herbs.

It certainly didn’t look or taste like garbage. I was really happy how it came out. I didn’t get the compliments that I did on the coleslaw last year but that is OK. My satisfaction is the most important.

End Your Programming Routine: At any given time, there is two to five different hot sauces in the fridge. All the jams, pickles, mustards drive me nuts. Any time I can repurpose all those things into a productive alternative, I am extremely satisfied. And that is what we have here. Truth be told, I would be just as happy if it tasted terrible, fortunately, that wasn’t the case.

August 8, 2023 – Coctel de Cameron

August 8, 2023 /

It has been a week since my wife left for France and I have not cooked yet, subsisting on leftovers (almost). On a side note, I think that it is pretty ridiculous that I would even have this quantity of leftovers in the first place. I opened the refrigerator and saw that there was a half pound of bay shrimp in there. Uh oh, not something to be hanging around too long,

I did have to do some prep and mixing to make this shrimp cocktail. This is why I said almost none. While technically it is not cooking, it is more than microwaving a plate or simply eating out of the fridge. This particular version is the Mexican one and my favorite style of shrimp cocktail.

You can find a number of different recipes for coctel de cameron. I will use my words in the basic groups for simplicity: shrimp, pico de gallo, cucumber and avacado in tomato juice. My wife likes hers’ on the sweeter side so that is where I gravitate. Ketchup and orange soda in the right proportions for sweetness and thickness go into my version. In addition to my mystery shrimp, I also had a side container of ketchup, tomato sauce and sliced tomatoes from burgers we made. So, I got to use all those things up as well.

Strict adherents to Mexican food would say things like use white onion in your pico de gallo. It is true that I think that it works better but I use what I have. The same goes with quantity. I mean who really knows what is 1/2 cup of diced onion? From my experience, I would say about a quarter of an onion, but don’t get hung up on things. I used the quantity I had leftover.

After making the pico, dice the avacado and cucumber and dump all of the ingredients together. Salt, sweeten and bitter to your own tastes. I like to let it set together an hour or two. Serve with saltines or tortilla chips and enjoy with an ice cold cerveza.

Feel free to add your favorite hot sauce as well. It is also often garnished with additional limes. I think it is a little weird, but some restaurants offer you a choice of tepid or cold. I suppose that it is really an homage to the traditional lack of refrigeration in Mexico.

End Your Programming Routine: When you are sweating outside, eating a chilled serving of shrimp cocktail is refreshing. You know when you are hot and you don’t feel like eating anything? This changes that dynamic. It is also a good platform to use up little bits of leftovers juices, sauces and vegetables outside of prescribed recipes.

May 24, 2023 – Been Making Skillets

May 24, 2023 /

Sometimes you get surprised by things. I was pretty blasé about another cookbook as our April book club choice. That being said, cooking in skillets fits my life. It is easy clean-up and simple construction of recipes and techniques. In the last six weeks I have made four or five recipes and it is growing on me.

Shown above is a Cuban pork chop. By the way, I think that my picture looks much better than the one in the book. We like to vary what we make and eat from day to day. Sometimes I just take something out of the freezer just to have something defrosted without knowing exactly what I am going to do with it. This happened to be the result.

Within Milk Street: The World in a Skillet, there are several pork chop recipes. The other one was a Chinese version. I chose this one because all I needed was cilantro, we had all the rest of the ingredients and time is always a factor on weeknights. I really do want to try the other recipe some day. That one also had cilantro but some additional peppers, including Sichuan which I don’t have or know if the they are in our local store. I might be inclined to skip or even substitute but I on that night, I just wanted dinner going.

The other reason this book fits our lives is that we eat the world. Friday night we had Mexican, Saturday we ate from food trucks (I had Bahn mi) that inspired me to make pho on Sunday. Earlier in the week we had round steak with gravy over mashed potatoes. I would say on any given week we have Latin, Asian and American but I also love Indian and just good food.

As I have said with other cookbooks that some of them just don’t fit me. If they are seasonally oriented and we don’t have alignment in the season or the fair doesn’t excite me, like salads the book will slip to the bottom of the pile. This one seems to speak to me based on the composition and techniques.

I also like that there is an index by main ingredient. So, I can look at pork and see the fifteen different recipes that are listed. I often use this technique on the internet as well. I search “recipes for round steak”. And sometimes I also use “quick” or “easy” as well. I works fine, but there is satisfaction on using a resource that you paid money for like a cookbook.

I also find that many recipes are very similar on the internet. They might be named differently or the picture looks different but they are often duplicates of the same things. I guess that is why they are in the common domain. I find that often cookbooks go deeper into the subject matter and are more unique. That is what you are paying for.

This is not to mention that I have a hard time trusting internet recipes unless they are pretty basic, particularly the timing. I find Food Network recipes to be particularly poor at this and very often it is 3x to 4x the overall time. I am not sure that all of these celebrity chefs are really in touch with reality on such things and I think that they are more concerned about content generation than content accuracy.

The other thing that drives me crazy is all the crap you have to wade through to get to the recipe. So many of the blogs talk about how to select the cut of meat or the history of ingredients and I have to search around for the oven temperature or the list of ingredients. It makes it difficult to decide to execute the recipe without going through the entire article to find if you want to do it.

End Your Programming Routine: My wife gets on me for her perception of me complicating dinner. I think that if I do the planning, cooking and finish in a reasonable time why does it matter? Continuing to work on the craft with challenges and new ideas makes me better altogether. The overall time was listed at 40 minutes and I don’t think that it was much over that. Plus, it got good reviews from the eaters. I think it was a win on multiple fronts.

April 12, 2023 – Menudo’s Cousin: Meet Pozole

April 12, 2023 /

I think more people may be familiar with Pozole. It is a pork, hominy and chile soup. I think that it is more approachable in that the main meat portion of the dish is not tripe. As a preparer of menudo lately, I think it might be cheaper too.

My wife has generally refused to host pozole when making menudo is possible. But, I convinced her that this was something I wanted to do. It turns out that there are two types, red and green. I had never seen any other than red but it seems as though she didn’t know red existed.

We made pozole for Easter. I thought that probably the time economics of one big pot of soup beat putting some kind of meal together that included sides as well. I had one thing to shop for, one thing to prep and one thing to watch as it cooks.

I didn’t really read the instructions too carefully because once I saw the ingredients I knew how to make it. In fact, it is nearly exactly like making menudo with a few different ingredients. On Saturday afternoon, I put 7 lbs of pork hocks into the pot with 3 lbs dice pork tenderloin, two whole heads of garlic, 8 tablespoons of oregano and 6 quarts of water.

I very likely would have used half to no water if it were not for the fact that we were leaving for the evening. I didn’t want the meat to burn before the liquid was rendered out. When I make menudo, I don’t even add water to it. I turned the burner on to very low simmer. My goal would be to have the garlic dissolve, the meat fall off the bone but still have substance in the morning.

In the morning I added 3 lbs of cubed pork, 1 drained #10 can of hominy and the chiles. The original recipe called for 16 ancho chile (dried poblano chile). I felt that was a little light so I added the remainder of a bag of California chilis as well, about 20. Normally, if I wanted more flavor, I would add more of the same chile rather than mix them but ancho can have some spice to them and I was really trying to keep this spiceless.

There is a lot of mass here, the recipe was scaled to 16 quarts so salt to taste. It is going to take quite a bit of it but keep tasting, over salted soup is ruined. I know because I have done it multiple times and I sure don’t want to do it for Easter dinner.

After seasoning, let it all come together and prepare the garnish. Traditional garnish are tostadas, shredded cabbage, lime wedges, chopped white onion and sliced radish. In my house, we have to have both lime and lemon because some people prefer one over the other. I find lemon too bright and the sweeter lime is the right flavor as well as the authentic choice.

The way I made this, it was very mild. Many people like to spice it up a bit and so salsa or sliced chili peppers to add some heat could also be made. I skipped this preparation this time. I would have substituted menudo mix for some of the oregano if I had it on hand because it has chile pequin in it and it rather spicy. But, I didn’t want any leftover spices I wasn’t going to use for a while.

End Your Programming Routine: Who doesn’t like ham. We had it most Easter dinners throughout my life. I thought this twist was fun and delicious. I think it was a win on the effort front and I think that I convinced my wife that pozole is not the weaker cousin of menudo. It looks a lot the same and even tastes a lot the same, it just comes from a different family (of ingredients).

March 8, 2023 – Cooking For Crowds

March 8, 2023 /

Last weekend, we had a family weekend. There was fourteen of us and we took turns with different meals. My mom made the comment that I am using to cooking for crowds and that is true. What isn’t is that everyone has a lot of experience doing it. With the size and frequency of gathering with my wife’s family, I have cooked for thirty many times, often without much warning.

Probably everyone has thrown a party. In a limited extent, people have some knowledge about what it takes. But, throwing a graduation party is really a different than breakfast for fifteen. I thought that I would take some time to talk about some tips today.

The photo above is not last weekend but a typical night in Spain. The way that they do it, people in attendance all bring something to share. I would say it is kind of ‘pot lucky’ which is a little bit different than a weekend getaway. But, certainly another idea.

Here are some things that I think make a difference.

  • Don’t expect perfection. It’s not a wedding, just a meal. Relax and go with the flow.
  • Calculating proportions: take what you eat or your family eats and extrapolate the total count
  • Keep dishes simple like soup and rolls, chili dogs, scrambled eggs, spaghetti or lasagna.
  • The oven is your friend. If not cooking in it, it can be used to keep stuff warm so that everything can be served at the same time.
  • Don’t be afraid to have others contribute, it lightens the load
  • If you are limited by silverware or table space, people can eat in waves.
  • Prep as many things as possible before cooking. Have ingredients cut and ready to cook. It is way more important the larger the meal.

A sample menu for our weekend was Friday night: pizza (we cheated), Saturday Morning: frozen cinnamon rolls, sausage links and scrambled eggs, Saturday Evening: build your own tacos and Sunday morning: pancakes and sausage with leftovers thrown in. Notice that we didn’t plan for lunch. There was plenty of leftover pizza and other snacks around to bridge the gap. Truthfully, I wasn’t hungry anyway given that we had a large and late breakfast.

End Your Programming Routine: You can do this. Unless you are running a restaurant or you simply want to spend your time cooking, the point is to get in and get out. That being said, cooking itself can be family time. So, relax and it will be what it is.

January 17, 2023 – Dealing With Pantry Bloat

January 17, 2023 /

If it were left strictly up to me, I would keep a tight control on what goes in to the pantry. Right or wrong, I feel an obligation to ‘get rid of things’. It ends up being an alphabet soup if you will of things that you thought you would make or partials or whatever.

Here is the technique that I use. I pick an ingredient and then I build a meal around it. That’s it. You keep doing that until you eliminate oddball stuff or get the volume of items cleared out. Of course, you could always use the canned food drive as well.

I strongly recommend that you “buy what you eat”. Looking at my picture you can see that there are a couple cans of soup. I purchased those because my wife was sick and she wanted pho. It was already 5pm and I was 30 mins from home. I made the decision to buy chicken noodle soup instead of adding another hour of going to a restaurant and ordering take out. She told me that she hates chicken noodle soup. You would think after 30 years, that might be something I knew, but that was news to me. So, I bought something that we don’t eat.

You can also see that we have a can of Jack fruit. That particular item, my son bought from the Asian grocery store. We have a vegetarian, Mexican cookbook that uses jack fruit in place of meat. This particular ingredient I do plan on using, I have just been lazy about doing it.

The dry side of the pantry is more difficult to one and done. For this reason, I suggest that you either substitute whenever possible or buy the smallest quantity available. If you find that you are really gaga over the results, then invest in the real thing because going the other way around leaves you with a 7/8″ container of an ethnic spice or mix that you have to make copious quantities (or throw it out).

I have loads of hot sauces, rubs, seasoning mixes etc. I personally have an aversion to some of these things because I don’t trust the composition. My preference is to make my own blends from basic spices that is sized for what I am doing. I guess that it doesn’t hurt to have these things around, I just don’t like the clutter. We will be thankful in the zombie apocalypse.

Another trick I have used successfully is the bulk section. Bulk doesn’t necessarily mean large quantity, it means quantity of your choosing without packaging. So when you have 3 leftover lasagna noodles because the pack has 12, you can buy 6 noodles from the bulk section to get rid on the three you do have. It is also good for recipe sized purchases. And added advantage is that it is cheap.

I have a similar relationship with the refrigerator as the pantry. And the strategy is the same, pick an ingredient and build a meal around it. Things like jellies can be incorporated in sauces or compotes for example. Keep going and stop buying things that you only use once and pretty soon, things will be cleaned up.

End Your Programming Routine: This is a balance. I would never tell my family that they couldn’t purchase something. But, I don’t appreciate the burden of having leftover ingredients around. I guess if no one can stand it, you can always pitch it but I hate the waste too. I would much rather find a way to use it up than throw it away. Above all, if you focus on eliminating the problem, then chances are pretty good that you will succeed.

January 11, 2023 – Think Outside the Burrito

January 11, 2023 /

The breakfast burrito is the the perfect palate for leftovers. I often find that I can creatively use things that I wouldn’t normally do because it is fun. Frequently it is the case that when we have significant quantity of leftovers that I am looking for ways to re-imagine them. But breakfast is a place to use that tiny bit.

I will give some examples. My wife is a big fan of what we call church tacos. When we talk Taco Tuesday, this is what we are talking about. They are what you might recognize as the classic, Taco Bell style ground beef taco. I am abhorred by the fast food version but we use our own beef and corn tortilla, lettuce, tomato, cheese, sour cream and salsa. The reason we call them church tacos is because the local catholic church sells tacos like this out of their food cart at celebrations.

This is a lot of background to explain that we usually have two or three tacos worth of meat leftover. It is not enough to do much with but I like to mix with scrambled eggs to put in my breakfast burrito. Another thing that I like to do is make a hash with that leftover end of roast beef and potatoes, onions and peppers. It is not just meat, but those small quantities of green (red/yellow/orange) peppers as well. If you have leftover fajita fixings scramble well with eggs as well.

During New Year’s Eve, we mad a ton of snacks for a very few people. One of the things that was brought over was a pile of jalapeno poppers. So, when you have 20 of them for four people along with a charcuterie and dip and other things, you end up with a lot leftovers. What to do with them? Put them in breakfast burritos.

I simply cut a whole one in half lengthwise and added it to my eggs and potatoes and instant breakfast burrito. I find that this is a good place to add the one leftover hotdog or sausage. I have also used those take-home box French fries as well. We also often have a small amount of beans as well. I love beans in my breakfast, burritos included.

One more tip. After the burrito is wrapped, I think that it benefits from putting on the griddle whole. This gives a chance for the cheese to melt and it also reduces some of the excessive moisture that the tortilla contains and also tends to keep the whole thing together while you are eating it.

I have not taken the time to master the flour tortilla. This is something that I probably won’t ever do because we just don’t eat many of them. And when you want to make a breakfast burrito, it is not something that you want to add another couple of hours making tortillas. However, I will say that the homemade tortillas doubles the quality result.

There are some different strategies that I use with leftover corn tortillas and salsa, but that is a topic for a different day. If you don’t like tortillas then all of these things can be made without the tortilla and then I call them a scramble. Sometimes I do it that way, particularly when the vegetable quantities are higher that I want to use or when I replace white potatoes with sweet potatoes.

End Your Programming Routine: What I am trying to get across today is that you can have small amounts of things that you can mix together and get some magical results. This not only keeps you inventory tidy but keeps things that would normally be passed over because there is just not enough to do anything with from hanging around until they get pitched. I have my preferential palate, but I am sure that there are other combinations of things that would be just as good, I just haven’t tried them yet.

December 28, 2023 – Black Eyed Peas and New Years

December 28, 2022 /

If you have ever lived in the south, then this very well may be a nothing burger. The first time we celebrated New Years Day in South Carolina, I found out that it was some kind of tradition. Imagine me, a doe eyed west coaster talking with our strongly southern accented friends asking if we have black eyed peas for New Years.

First of all, I don’t know if I had ever eaten black eyed peas. Secondly, we certainly didn’t have any sort of tradition like eating them on New Years. And more so than that, who puts a dime in the bean pot?

That’s right, the person that gets the dime in their serving gets and extra helping of luck throughout the year. At least that is the superstition. Doing some quick research, it seems like this tradition is very strong in the Carolinas because so much of the low land was strongly Gullah/Geechee west African descendants. As such, black eyed peas, field peas and rice hold a common culinary base for cultural cooking.

These beans can be served bland like any dry and boiled bean or they can be a full meal. Soak the beans overnight, drain the liquid in the morning and go crazy. I like a mirepoix, bacon/fatback, broth and a lot of collard greens, particularly the stems seasoned with some cajun or creole seasoning. You can serve that with some cornbread. It is easy peasy, just have your planning in place.

Today’s nanny state says not to put a dime in the beans. You are going to choke on it and die. Then your estate will sue the host and we will have another blood feud. So much for extra luck. I’ve never done it because I don’t believe in extra luck, but would say just warn people to be on the lookout for something non-edible.

I went down a total rabbit hole when I was looking at traditions for New Years day. What I learned is that there is no real standardization on when a new years should be. Ancient Rome was March 1, India is Diwali (October), China and Islam use a lunar calendar (late winter). A different topic for a different day so, I guess we will stick to the USA. Fireworks at midnight, the Rose parade or black eyed peas. It used to be college football bowl games until the playoff system screwed it all up.

End Your Programming Routine: New Year Day is one of those rare holidays that doesn’t seem to hold much in terms of expectations. At only one week from Christmas, it is so close that I feel like it doesn’t get much attention, traditions aside. I always feel like it is here and gone. So, why not fire up a pot of beans and serve a hearty and hot meal as a new tradition.