Cooks vs. Bakers

There are two types of people who make meals: cooks and bakers.  You may think they're the same, but they couldn't be more different.  Cooks rarely use recipes and measure most of their ingredients out by feel.  The food they make is high on creativity, but low on reproducibility.  Bakers, on the other hand, are rarely far away from their measuring cups and place a premium on accuracy.  They have to be this way because baking breads and pastries is more a science than an art, and if you miss one step you'll have a ruined product. 

I am a cook. I'm sharing this with you partially because I'm a disaster with anything requiring teaspoons and yeast (save for beer), and partially because it may help you to understand why there are no exact recipes in this blog. 

Classic Cook Example:

Mary came to me the other day and said that she'd read an article about Ricotta cheese being used in French toast.  So the next morning I put ricotta cheese in between two pieces of sour dough bread and was about to make French Toast out of it when a little voice inside my head (the good voice) said, "Spread cherry preserves in the middle.  The kids will love it!"  So I did it. 

And, as the little voice had predicted, the kids loved it too:

Next time you get a chance to make French toast, think Ricotta and some preserves.  It'll be a winner.   



Omelet on the Barbecue?!? You bet.

A few years back the kids got bored with scrambled eggs all the time and challenged me to make an omelet.  I found out that it wasn't too easy to cook one correctly; however, after some practice I had it down.   I found myself going back to square one today.  Let me introduce you to failed barbecue omelet attempt number 1:

I was going to hide it from you and pretend like it never existed, but then I figured I owed it to you to see my mistakes and my successes.   So I turned the temp wayyyyyyyyy down for attempt number two and things turned out much better.  Successful attempt number 2:

I have to apologize to my dad, because he's correctly recommended to me in the past that I should use white pepper with eggs.  What can I say?  I'm a philistine.

And for dinner, may I present to you Spiedinis:

Easy to make, and tasty as all get out.  Organic kielbasa (we almost always use organic or natural for everything we cook), yellow bell peppers, red onions, and sour dough bread, all brushed with a rosemary, dijon, red wine vinaigrette. 

And Mary whipped up a killer arugula, strawberry and almond salad with goat cheese and a berry vinaigrette.  Happy tummies tonight.

13th Wedding Anniversary = Mary's favorite breakfast

Mary, who loves eggs, saw a picture of baked eggs on the cover of a food magazine quite a few years back and it's been a favorite of hers ever since. 

Yes, I meant to turn it into a happy face.  Happy Anniversary honey.

The eggs are fairly simple; we saute domestic mushrooms, shallots, and thyme.   Next, you line a muffin pan with ham, pile in the cooked mushroom mixture, and crack an egg over the top.  All that's left is cooking it over indirect heat at about 375 for about 15 minutes.  The eggs should be a little jiggly when you pull them off the heat.  They'll firm up in about 5 minutes. 

Re dinner - nothing to post for that tonight.

Poached Eggs and Rellenos...sort of.

Again, why grill for 3 months straight?  The forcasted high for the next 4 days is 104, 109, 109, and...109, and the lows will be in the mid to low 80s.  No fun.  Keeping the heat outside where it belongs feels like the right thing to do. 

This morning we took a stab at poaching eggs.  The picture looks nice, but the eggs were slightly overcooked.  Not my best effort.  And they stuck to the non-stick pan.  We paid about $10 for that pan!!!   Ok, so you get what you pay for. 

For dinner, Mary committed us to "Rellenos."  I put Rellenos in quotes because they aren't totally traditional.  We roast and stuff them, but they're not battered or fried.  HOWEVER, they taste AWESOME!!  We used the lobster from yesterday, cilantro, jack cheese, and green onions for the filling.

My only complaint is that these bad boys are time consuming.  Most meals you'll see in this blog are made in less than 30 minutes; however, this took a full hour because we had to roast the peppers first.  Still, it was worth the effort.

Let me know if you want the recipe.

Lamb Burgers for Dinner and Bread Pudding for Dessert

Up until the last minute, I was thinking that I would be cooking lobster for dinner tonight, but at the last minute we changed to lamb burgers.  We did the partially because I couldn't get my head around what I wanted to do with the lobster and partially because I may have been a little "slow" today after a long night of poker with some friends.

On the burgers I used some of the caramelized red onions left over from dinner last night and the bacon from breakfast today.  Leftovers rule!!

As well, Mary, who was much more motivated than I was this evening, decided we'd do bread pudding on the grill.  We used a recipe from Food Network, put it on some aluminum foil, closed it up and cooked it for about 35 minutes on an indirect heat. 

I'm a firm believer that bread pudding isn't complete without a bourbon, raisin sauce over the top, so I whipped one up and cooked in our now regularly used Coleman camping cookware.    When I was just out of college I worked at One Market Restaurant and the pastry chef once told me that she had the most important job in the whole place because you can screw up the meal, but if you nail the dessert, the customer will always walk out happy.  We nailed this dessert and everyone walked out happy. 

Ricotta Scrambled Eggs

Mary has ricotta on the brain today, so she came up with this little scrambled delight for breakfast today:

We used our trusty Coleman Camping Cookware (a $30 purchase from Target because we're not putting our nice pans on the grill) and scrambled some eggs with truffle salt, pancetta, green onions and basil, then we finished by stirring in some ricotto cheese.  Mmmmmmmm, this is how you start your Sunday!

Also pictured is the cherry, berry smoothie, another Mary creation.  I'm ready to take on the world right now.

Whole Snapper

13 years ago this week Mary and I were in Italy on our honeymoon. Holy cow, has it really been 13 years?!?!  Why am I sharing this tidbit of info?  Because in Venice is where Mary and I had Branzino Per Due, a whole fish cooked and served table side.  Mary has been in love with that dish ever since and we've folded the cooking of whole fish into our regular rotation of things to cook. 

We picked up a whole snapper at Whole Foods for not a whole lot of money today and here it is fresh off the grill:

Here's what we did.  We took some red onions, cut them a little thinner than we usually do for the grill, tossed them with red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper, and then tossed them on the grill at a medium high heat.  We also tossed on some thinly sliced lemons.   After they got a slight char, we pulled them off.  Next, we put the whole fish on the grill for a few minutes on both sides to get some grill marks.   Then we put it all together in aluminum foil and cooked it with indirect heat for about 20 minutes.  Voila.

The New Griddle is Here! The New Griddle is Here!

Weber update:  Customer service at Weber lived up to their commitment and sent me a new regulator priority overnight.   Thank you Weber!  Not only that, I also got a new toy.  A cast iron griddle for the grill arrived as well.  Oh yeah!!!  So let's see how this 300lb bad boy works:

Pancakes?

Check!

And Bacon?

Check!

The eggs were so so.  I think I need to season the griddle a little more before we step up to eggs. 

3 days, nothing but grilling, so far so good.

Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

Today marked the first day of what was too be an entire summer of nothing but grilling.  That's right, nothing was supposed to be cooked inside the house.  However, our less-than-one-month-old Weber Genesis E-310, which had been working to near perfection, broke last night. 

Insert Plan B - Cooking with our Smoker.

Immediately, I pulled a turkey breast from the freezer, whipped up a brine, and defrosted the breast in the brine overnight in the fridge.  If I'm brining turkey breast, that can mean only one thing in my house.  I'm firing up the smoker.   Problem solved.  :-)

Brines are pretty easy,  I use about (I'm a guestimate kinda guy) 3/4 cup of brown sugar, 3/4 cup of kosher salt, and about a gallon of water.  Wisk it until the salt is dissolved and you have a brine.  Also, once the breast is brined for a minimum of 12 hours and a max of 24 hours, rinse it thoroughly before smoking.  I pat the breast dry with a paper towel, add a little olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, and drop it on the grill.

After about 5 hours of smoking the breast, we had a beautiful piece of turkey all ready for dinner.  And as for the rest of the meal, we have a mini-weber we use for tailgating and camping.  So we fired it up to cook the corn, squash, some pancetta for the salad and some baked beans.  

Dinner #1 managed!!

A few notes on the bird and smoking. 

Smoking food:  People thinks it's complicated and takes a lot of tending. It doesn't.  In fact, I have a rule, well I have a lot of rules about cooking, but one of my main rules is to never, NEVER peek at food in the oven or smoker.  Opening and closing makes the temperature fluctuate, and fluctuating the temp on your food will make it dry and chewy in a heartbeat.  Never open the door!

Some people like to put a bunch of different spices on their meats before smoking them.  Why?  I have no idea.  Smoked meat tastes amazing with nothing more than salt and pepper.  If you add anything else, you're just masking the flavor.