What did you cook?

Been on an enchilada phase here recently



forgive my dirty plating

 

I'm going keto this month. Which means the fattiest cuts of meat I can get my hands on. Made chipotle braised pork belly

 

Sorry, no pics but this recipe was delicious and fully worth the time and effort:

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/10/shrimp-and-grits-recipe.html

I made a couple of minor changes. Instead of shelling shrimp and simmering the stock with the shells and mushrooms I used preshelled shrimp and simmered the stock with mushrooms and a tbsp+a tsp of clam juice. Also, I used coarse ground corn meal instead of grits. I should have doubled the recipe and had leftovers because we wiped it out.

 

Oysters in a muffin pan on the pit with minced garlic, butter, and Italian dressing. Topped off with a sprinkle of parmassan cheese.

 

Jalapeños stuffed w/ Cajun boudin wrapped in bacon with portobello mushrooms stuffed w/ Italian sausage. Those jalapeños were hot!

 

@Ray - I love all the cajun food! For thanksgiving I usually do a crawfish pie and andouille stuffing.

 

Here's pork shoulder cooked in salsa verde, refried beans, cauliflower rice and a fried egg. Ugly-delicious



Pork recipe soon

 

Made an uncomfortably large bowl of Udon for myself!

https://steamykitchen.com/43189-homemade-udon-noodle-recipe-morimoto.html

Only thing I didn't technically 'make' myself is the soy sauce and the mirin I used as part of the broth. Otherwise, everything else was from scratch following the recipe above.

Broth is modified from his recipe though. It was two chickens worth of leftover bones I boiled overnight. Reduced that to about 5 cups of liquid, added 1/2 cup of soy sauce, 1/2 cup of mirin. Cooked the shrimp, shelled them, crushed the shells, boiled that too, added it in with some green onions (Not the ones seen in the final photo: I took it out after). Let that simmer for an hour or so while I made and cooked the noodles, then strained it into the broth.

Toppings are just the cooked shrimp (quickly fried in some butter), boiled eggs, more green onions, and pepper.

Full recipe probably makes enough food for 4-6 people, depending on what else you use for toppings. I only made a quarter sizing of the noodles (looots of leftover broth), and I'm pretty stuffed.

 

Cajun hogs head cheese. This isn’t the grocery store gel crap most places sell. This is loaded with pork. You can slice this and make a po-boy with it

 

I'm up for about anything right now Ray, except a turkey sandwich at this point. And now we are making turkey stock for soups and gravies. And freezing the leftovers for turkey enchiladas, turkey pot pies and the list goes on. I want some roast beef for Christmas! In fact a French Dip sounds good right now.

 

Damn nice @Marvey that looks perfect. I sewed together 3 racks of lamb into a crown and did it low at 200 for an hour then super high for 5-10 minutes to get internal temp to 130. Was so good.

 

Made some killer bulgogi burgers the other day.



Used this recipe:

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2017/06/korean-bulgogi-burgers-recipe.html

Serious Eats has become my go-to for finding recipes. Great resource for gastroscience type stuff as well.

 

So about a month ago I decided to make a pastrami sandwich. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal, but I decided to make a project out of it. The sauerkraut, pastrami and even the bread were made from scratch. Or at least close to scratch. A lot of these pics are on google drive, so there's a chance it might not work for you.



The sauerkraut is basically the Serious Eats Recipe. This took at least one week of room temperature fermentation followed by another three weeks in the fridge. A bit tangy and very good.

Next up is the pastrami. For this I decided to go the route of buying a corned beef and smoking it. I figured the main difference between the two was that corned beef was boiled and pastrami was smoked and steamed. Corned beef is typically made from brisket, and I have smoked brisket many times before so I wasn't worried. The difference is that when you reach 'the stall' with a Texas style brisket, you usually wrap it in butcher paper or foil and throw it back on the smoker until it finished cooking. For pastrami instead the strategy is to steam the meat after smoking until you reach the final temp of ~203f.




Break down of the process is as follows

-Soak corned beef in water for at least 30 min to remove excess salt. Then season with ground caraway seed and black pepper
-smoker brisket for 4-6 hours at 250f until you reach a temp of 165f
-remove brisket and refrigerate for at least 12 hours.
-Steam brisket for 1.5-2 hours until the brisket has a temp of 203f
-allow temp to drop back down to 140f before slicing. (I didn't wait that long and I had a dryish pastrami)



The final piece of the sandwich was the bread. I decided to go with the famous Jim Lahey No Knead Bread recipe. I needed to practice a few times because I had never baked bread before. The dough is not the easiest to work with, but with some experience it becomes manageable. While the standard recipe makes a very good bread, it wasn't big enough for a sandwich. I decided to go big and scale the recipe. Here is what I did.

-double the quantities and allow to rest for 12-18 hours
-use plenty of flour and fold the dough over and form into a ball. Place in a bowl greased with olive oil and allow to rise again for 2 hours. Maybe 3 hours.
-While dough is resting preheat the oven to 475f for 45 min with a dutch oven inside. If it has a plastic handle, remove this first and stuff the hole with aluminum foil.
-Now you need to be quick for this part. Once oven is preheated, remove the dutch oven and drop your dough in there. Don't worry too much about the shape or cutting the top. Replace lid and return to oven.
-Bake at 475F for 15min, then lower temp to 450f and bake for an additional 25 min. At end of the 25 min, remove the lid back for a final 20 minutes to give some color to the outside. Total bake time is 1 hour.
-At the end of baking, remove bread from dutch oven and allow to rest for 3 hours.







While there may be better bread out there, I don't really believe you can do much better at home. Definitely worth a try. Final assembly was the following

-pastrami
-swiss cheese
-obscene amount of sauerkraut
-strong mustard. The type that induces wasabi pain



The sandwich was interesting. My friend and wife both said that the outside was pastrami like, but the inside was more like corned beef. I agreed and if I ever do this again I think I'll cure it myself. Taste was good even though it was a bit salty. I can definitely do better.

 

Thanks! I didn't mean to time it with your double hospital stay.

 

Chicago inspired hot dog



The real chicago hot dog has a pickle spear, radioactive relish, chopped onion, sport peppers, fresh tomato, mustard (never ketchup) and celery salt.

Mine is similar except with homemade pickled onion, pickled jalapeño and without relish. I attempted a pickled tomato but that was a total failure. I cannot stress enough the importance of celery salt in a Chicago dog.

 

It was worth $13.99 a pound. I had to cut the NY strip in half to enjoy another meal out of it. Dauphinoise potatoes and creamed spinach.

 

Had to balance out my previous post. Spring mix, Kale, Broccoli, Radish, Onion, Bell Pepper, Chickpeas, Sunflower seeds, Clover and Broccoli Sprouts and Mixed MicroGreens all with a Orange Raw Cashew Vinagrette. This thing is huge! dang, forgot the flax seeds