Dateline: May 16, 2020 Alabama banished and Pork Tenderloin is in

Today, we cleaned up our little corner of Alabama on our deck in Brooklyn, NY.  We put all the grills, (3, but who is counting?  Oh, my husband is!) into reasonable places and cleaned up the fence, grill areas, and plantings.  The area is able to be used easily, and those things that are necessary for each grill set up are right there next to that grill!  A miracle.

It took us the better part of a sunny afternoon, and we are both a bit sunburnt and a bit loopy.  Me, I'm loopy from a can of Saturday Session Sauvignon Blanc and a killer margarita.  I have adjusted my recipe for the margarita, 2 parts tequila, 1 part triple sec, 1/2 part lime juice, 1/2 part lemon juice, 4 dashes of Fee Brothers Fee Foam in a shaker with ice.  Shake until the whole thing until it sounds full, strain into a glass with new ice, with a float of mezcal on top.  Sit back, enjoy the world going to pot and ponder dinner.

Fuck!  Dinner!  I had 2 smallish pork tenderloins marinating in the fridge.  The marinade was a sliced jalapeno, several cloves of garlic sliced, a thumb of ginger sliced and the remainder of a bottle of vinho verde.  Shake in some ancho chili pepper, some chipotle chili pepper and some lemon pepper and squish all around the tenderloins!  Put in fridge again, and forget about it.

At about 6pm I started the grill up using apple wood pellets and when it got to 350° F I put the meat and unshucked corn on the cob onto the grates.  Closed the lid and walked away to talk to a neighbor.  About 20 minutes later came in to slurp off the margarita, and slowly wandered out to check on the grill.

Everything was going fine, except that I discovered that the hot spot of the grill is to the left, not the right so I switched the meat and corn around.  Closed the lid and walked away to the rest of my margarita!

Meat reached 145°F and I took it off the grill along with the corn.  Set the table, microwaved the broccoli from the other night and dinner was done.  The corn was superb, clearly not local, but absolutely delicious.  When I tasted the meat, the first flavor that hit was jalapeno. After that, came the smoke.  Not much garlic or ginger came through.  It was the grassiness of the jalapeno that I caught, not the spice.

sliced pork tenderloin

reheated broccoli

full plate

I had a second piece of corn and am thinking about going back into the kitchen for the last ear while Bill is on a Zoom call.  Teehee.  Also, it is obvious that I am an around the cob corn eater, not a down the line eater.  Just sayin'.  I have a pineapple, watermelon, apple, or pear waiting for dessert.  Or I could be really bad and eat a spoonful of the, wait for it, dark chocolate hummus.  I had to try it.  It is awesome!  A little on the grainy side because of the beans, but nice and chocolate-y with a slight sweetness.  Tribe brand.

PS:  In case you were wondering, my mod that I did yesterday worked great.  The lavalock welting kept the heat in and the grill running true to temp for the cook.

Dateline: May 15, 2020 Tidal Pool and Farm Field

I just took some pizza dough out of the freezer, homemade, sourdough, no less.  After thinking about what to do with it, I took out a second piece and it is defrosting as I type.

I had a hankering for pizza, but I have no sauce, no mozzarella, no ricotta, so traditional options are off the table.  Of course, I could send the husband-unit out to the store for such things, but prefer not to do that.  So what can I do with pizza in a different direction?  Clam pizza!  And in foraging in the freezer, I found some left over lahmacun.  Problem solved! (Please pardon the self-linkage.)

My concept for the clam pizza is to stretch out the dough when it is thawed, slather it with garlic oil, layer with the chopped clams, cover that with fine threads of pecorino cheese and oregano.  Perhaps a few of the killer cherry tomatoes that I have sitting on the counter?  Cut side up, so as to not water down the clamminess of the pie.  Maybe a little bit more garlic oil mixed with some of the clam juices.  I want to grill it.  I have a pizza ring for my Akorn King Griller and am thinking today maybe the day to take that bad, bad girl out for a test run.

The pizza ring is a stainless steel ring with handles and a slot in the front which is positioned on the grill and theoretically turns it into a pizza oven.  That's the theory, now to test that hypothesis!

With that much air flow going into the grill, it should get screaming hot, just like a pizza oven and the pizza should cook in about 5-ish minutes or so.  Copious testing notes will be made!  No, probably not, I will rely on the blog to help me remember what the hell I did with it!  For the lamhacun, I will attempt it on the aforementioned pizza oven experiment.

As an aside, last night I made a small mod to my pellet grill.  I added some lavalock insulating tape to the edges where the lid meets the grill.  My thought was that the smoker needs this so that the smoke stays in the smoker and exits out only through the smoke chimney. We will see, it needs 24 hours to fully cure.  I have enough tape to redo the rim of the Akorn if the spirit moves me.  Right now, that grill is doing ok.

I know you are dying to know how cheap am I really?  Well, the lump charcoal that got wet over the winter is slowly drying out and when I grilled another chicken last night, I know, too much chicken, but with the Cov-id meat issues, it was all I could get hold of, anyway, it was not as stinky, in fact, not stinky at all.  What came through was the citrus in the Peruvian marinade that FreshDirect puts on their prepped chicken.  It was really tasty.  A possible explanation for last night's positive outcome was that I let the grill get up to 400° F before adjusting the vents down.  It maintained a lovely 400°-425° F for the entire cook, without much wavering!  That chicken was cooked perfectly in about 40-45 minutes.

What to serve with these experiments?  A salad is always nice, maybe some shishito peppers blistered on the said same grill?  Maybe for dessert some grilled pineapple, or grilled watermelon!  All of the fruit will need to be inspected as to its ripeness and suitability for grilling.  The possibilities abound!

Here we go with tonight's dinner:

Pancetta

First off, I cleaned and sauteed the mushroom and pancetta.

'Shrooms

Then I went out to the grill and started a roaring fire.  I put in the pizza ring, and realized that it was not going to get screaming hot anytime this century, so I took it out and opened the vents and closed the lid.  While I waited for the grill to heat up, I rolled out the dough on a grill mat.  My thinking was that it would be easier to manipulate and to get in and out if it was on something and not just dough stuck to grates.

dough flecked with garlic oil

This, above, is sourdough pizza dough that has been dappled with garlic oil and bits of fine garlic. 

On the right, is a bit of crisped up pancetta that I will sprinkle about on top of the pizzas

mushrooms, sauteed

crisped up pancetta

I considered putting raw mushrooms on the pizza, but opted to sautee them in a bit of garlic and olive oil.

 To the left, is the pre-fired clam pie.  Under the shroud of pecorino cheese are 2 drained cans of chopped clams and fresh oregano leaves.  The cloud of cheese is then topped with some pancetta, hot pepper flakes, thinly sliced fresh garlic, and black pepper.

The second pie, was an amalgamation of left over lahmacun, sauteed mushrooms, pancetta, and garlic oil.

The clam pie went into the oven first.  When I got outside the grill had climbed to 800°F, so the pizza would cook very, very fast.  I opened up the grill put the ring into place and closed the lid.  I now had to wrestle the grill mat into the opening with tongs and watch it carefully.  As the clam pizza was bubbling away, I checked the bottom and it was really getting scorched.  I slid it off the mat onto the grill grates and kept peeking.  It was obvious that the bottom was going to become cinderized if I didn't get it off immediately. 

Onto a sheet pan and into the house.  I got the torch from the closet and got the spinach leaves ready and I torched the top side to cook the crust and brown the top some.  I was afraid that the dough would be quite raw in the center, but it was not.

Next went the lahmacun and mushroom pie into the oven with a more modest layer of pecorino on top.  This one too, quickly got charred on the bottom, and removed quickly and torched.

Out of the balance of the spinach that I washed, a chopped cucumber, 3 scallions, and a handful of cherry tomatoes rounded out the salad going with the meal.  I dressed the salad with lemon juice and left over garlic oil.

Lahmacun + Mushroom Pie

I think next time, I will put the pies onto the grill from the top, rather than thru the small opening at grate level.

Secondly, I will put a pizza stone on the grill and cook on that rather than on the grates or on a mat on the grates.

Thirdly, the flavors of both pies were outstanding.  The cinnamon in the lahmacun gave the pizza an interesting taste profile.  Not Italian, shifting further south into a blending with the Mideast perhaps.  I had never had a pizza like that before.  The clam pie was not clammy enough for me.  I think that was because I did not put any of the clam juice on the pie for fear that it would get soggy.  Visually, the spinach added something, but flavor wise it brought nothing to the party.

I would urge people to give the Lahmacun pie a try.  The mushrooms takes it away from its Turkish roots, into a more Mediterranean tasting experience.  Loved both pies and will continue to try to perfect grilling a pizza as the season progresses.

Dateline: May 13, 2020. In honor of Jack, an exploration of soup, Lentil Hodgepodge

So Jack, a twice removed cousin of my husband, Bill, stayed with us for 2 months last fall.  It was lovely having him and truth be told, sorry to see him move into his own apartment.  Currently he is hunkered down with his parents, sister, and soon to be brother-in-law in Rehoboth, Delaware.  He asked if I would write something about soup.  I did.  I was inspired to follow it up by making soup/stew for dinner tonight.

Ingredients

2 carrots, peeled and sliced into spoon-sized chunks

3 stalks of celery, cut into spoon-sized chunks

1 large onion, cut into spoon-sized chunks

1 leek, cleaned and cut into pieces

1 fennel bulb, cored, cut into spoon-sized chunks

4 andouille sausages, cut into rounds

1 T garlic flavored oil

1 T olive oil

1 bunch kale, stripped and chopped into spoon-sized pieces

1 bunch parsley with stems, chopped up

6 small zucchini, cut into spoon-sized chunks

10 small steamed potatoes

1 c brown lentils, rinsed

1 28 oz can diced tomatoes

600 ml dry white wine

1 qt chicken stock, preferably homemade

1/2 packet Goya Sazon

1 T nutritional yeast

Method

Aromatics into the pool

In a large dutch oven or soup pot put the oil.  When it is hot, add the first 6 ingredients and cook until the onions are softened and the sausage gives up some of its fat.  Salt and Pepper the aromatics gently.  

lentils ready for a swim

Add in the lentils and mix well

Add in the tomatoes, and mix

secret ingredient

Add the yeast in, and mix well to blend in.

bubble, bubble

Umami bombs away

Now add in the stock, mix well and bring to a slow simmer














Add in your greens and stir

Use any inexpensive light wine you have on han

Cover and simmer until lentils are almost tender, about 30-35 minutes.  Then add in your zucchini and potatoes.  Cover and simmer until ready.

All together now

And to finish things out, a lovely cucumber, onion, tomato, beet, and feta salad

Dateline: May 12, 2020. Grilled Chicken and other musings.

I cleaned my other grill and will test run it today with a chicken.  We had turkey saltimbocca last night and there are enough left overs for Bill for brekkies and lunch tomorrow!  So a new dinner is in order.  I have a ton of broccoli and I think that I will use it tonight and recycle the roasted potatoes from last night.

Last week, I cleaned out the grill, the Akorn King Griller and set a blazing fire in it and scraped the grates and inside down.  So perhaps tonight I will, if the wind dies down, set up a moderate fire and spatchcock a plain chicken and enjoy a simple grilled chicken, no smoke, no fancy flavors, nothing except salt, pepper, some oil and maybe a squeeze of lemon.

I had power washed the deck last week as well, and am spot checking it along with hitting the sides of the boards so when I oil it, it will be a single coat.  I am so digging this power washer.  Bill made fun of me for many years about buying it, now he sees that it does a really good job.

After researching on the web, if I ipe oil the deck, the color will be very dark brown with the possibility, distinct possibility, that the sun will bake it black.  That will be unable to be repaired unless I sand the deck to take off that top sun-burnt oil layer off.  So, I am not going to oil the deck since I would need to power wash it at least 2x times a year with the oil, I'll go with no coating and power wash once a year.

So the chicken and cauliflower steaks got thrown onto the grill.

We ate a mixed green salad with this.  The chicken was quite smoky, which I am chalking up to using damp lump charcoal.  An entire bag was soaked in water throughout the winter.  Oh well, I'm too cheap to throw it away.  Perhaps, I will spread a plastic drop cloth on the deck and dry it out that way!

Dateliine: May 9, 2020 So much time, I'll make kimchi

I had some cute tiny bok choy, some broccoli, and some regular cabbage. Kimchi can handle them all.

I have a favorite kimchi recipe.  Luckily, I have almost all ingredients on hand, so making kimchi is not an issue.  I did have to improvise some, I didn't have daikon, used regular globe radishes, didn't have asian pear, used granny smith apple, carrots, onions, and scallions all good to go.

schmearing mixture

salted greens waiting to be schmeared

The schmearing mixture smelled great!  So I tasted a little radish moon.  Yummy, but quite a kick.

The greens have been salted and are waiting for their 2 hours to be up before the paste gets schmeared all over and in between the leaves and all around the little broccoli heads.  I've got about 45 minutes to wait.

now just wait 4 - 7 days

Dateline: May 9, 2020 MAPO TOFU! Oh, yeah baby, it's on!

Mapo Tofu is my Chinese restaurant test dish.  If they make a good one, then nothing else will be horrid.  If they make a bad one, then the place gets scratched off my list and I move on to another one in the future.  Cold?  You bet, but I can't waste time with bad Chinese food.

I'm going to try a new recipe for a trusted source.  Mapo Tofu this recipe is straight forward, no fancy ingredients, well, doubanjiang and sichuan peppercorns are necessities and aren't easily subbed for.  Shaoxing can be subbed with dry sherry or a light dry vermouth.  My strong suggestion is to order some from Amazon.  I really like Pixian doubanjiang because it has the right amount of zip and salt without too much of each.  I bought one of the big jars, and then refill it with the bagged versions.  Pixian has the 3 diamonds on its label.

This is the pork, wine, ginger and soy  

tofu and scallions,  chopped and ready

wine, soy, doubanjiang,  and chili oil

Here is the almost finished product.  It just has to cook for a bit so that the tofu soaks up all that spicy goodness.  Final garnish of toasted sichuan pepper corns and scallion greens.  Delicious

Note:  This was a very different version than I usually make, I really liked it.  It has no garlic in it!  Shock of shocks!  I am going a day without garlic?

Dateline: May 8, 2020 What to do with Fish Cubes?

I had ordered fish cubes, shrimp, and scallops from Fresh Direct.  Not really having an idea of how I was going to use them!  The assortment was salmon, tuna, and some kind of flaky white fish, probably snapper.  All nice looking pieces, nothing gnarly looking, all skinless.

I was craving good Indian food, sadly, take-out from the few Indian restaurants around here that are doing take-out, leaves me feeling unsatisfied and a bit duped.  Out came the Indian cookbooks, and the NYT Cooking app, and I was ready to research.

I settled on Meen Gassi.  It was worth the pounding and grinding in the mortar and pestle to get the ingredients into a smooth paste.  Once I got the hang of how to do it, it became easier to grind the chilis and seeds against the wall, rather than pounding at the bottom.

midway thru grinding process

with tamarind added

Scarily enough, I actually followed this recipe, the only substitution I made was chicken stock instead of water (as I had lots and lots of stock made).

Here are the fish cubes, sprinkled with tumeric and salt

Onion, garlic, jalapeno, and ginger sautee-ing

paste added along with chicken stoc

fish into the pool

         

finished product

To go with this, I was craving beans, much to Bill's annoyance, but I also had ordered some fresh spinach so I decided on chana saag.  

I cooked up 1 cup of green chickpeas instead of using the cans.  Green chickpeas are young beans.  They are a deep green color and take a long time to get soft.  Thank goodness for the instant pot.  I cooked on high pressure for 30 minutes.  Tested a bean, still had a starchy core and was not very tender.  Did another 20 minutes and the tester was still a tiny bit starchy, but was tender.  I drained and held aside while I made the spinach sauce.  

After the cooking time in the instant pot for the sauce, I got out the stick blender and blended everything into a dark green semi-soupy mess.  Threw in the chickpeas and tasted.  It needed a bit of salt and as I was really hungry and couldn't spend the time searching for the amchur powder, I threw in the juice of 1/2 a lemon.  All was right with the world.  

Finished sauce

chick peas in and some garnish!

We ate the meal with some naan.  I was so happy!

Note:  the fish was quite spicy and the chana saag quite bland in comparison.  I didn't want two things that might blow your head off on the spice scale.  So I was happy with the spice level in both.  The sauce for the fish was dynamite.  It would be great on any protein!  I think next time I would like it to be thicker so that I coated each piece of fish nicely.  But, it's a keeper!

Dateline: May 6, 2020 Lasagna!!!

I had ordered some ricotta cheese that was to be used to make lasagna, today was as good a day as any. 

I love the instant pot recipe for sausage lasagna by Ivy Manning.  I thought about making marinara sauce and then rooted thru the freezer and found some puttanesca sauce in there.  Perfect. 

pan removed

I used an 8 qt instant pot, so I had to increase the ingredients to fit a 8 inch spring form pan.  I used 3 eggs to be sure that it would set up as well as 2 cups of ricotta.  I also had to hack the pasta part because I ran out of no boil pasta sheets after 2 layers and used shells for the top layer.  They worked, but for appearances I would use them in the middle in the future.  I pressure cooked on high for 32 minutes, and when I peeked into it, the shells where a bit crunchy and starchy still.  Back into the instant pot for another 8 minutes, with natural release.

Topped it with more mozzarella and used the broil setting with the duo crisp for 10 minutes.  Perfect!
After taking it out of the instant pot, I let the lasagna cool a bit so that it would (hopefully) firm up and not run all over the plate when I removed the pan. 

The spring form pan came off easily and the lasagna was perfect!

dinner is served

rounded out with a nice salad

A lovely bottle of red

Dateline: May 3, 2020 Salads and fridge clean out

We had drinks with our neighbors on the deck and after 2 negronis I no longer had the burning urge to cook dinner.  So I raided the fridge.  There were 2 left over stuffed artichokes.  I made a shepherd's salad and a beet salad to go with the artichokes.

I have parsley growing in the garden and it was beginning to bolt, so I gave it a shearing and with the handfuls of parsley I made a salad of 3 mini cukes, red and yellow cherry tomatoes, red onion, chives, and a white wine vinegar and olive oil dressing.  Salt and pepper were added at table side.

The beet salad was a little more time involved, but just as easy.  I steamed the beets in the instant pot on high for 28 minutes.  3 large beets on a trivet with about 1 cup or 1.5 cups of water in the inner pot.  Let the pressure drop naturally.  Remove the beets and wearing gloves, cut off top and bottom and the skin will slide off easily.  Each beet was cut into a 1/2 inch dice and mixed with 1/2 a vidalia onion cut into similar sized dice and 2 small mini cukes cut into quarter moons.

This is the stuffed artichoke that was made in the instant pot.  I was never a huge fan of stuffed artichokes, but boy, oh, boy, these were good and sitting in the fridge for a few days did not dampen their appeal.

Over all this was a quick and pretty satisfying meal.  Not bad for a total left turn from what I had been considering up until 5:30 pm!

Dateline: May 2, 2020 Testing, Testing

I am testing how the grill does a spatchcocked chicken and a whole head of cauliflower.  Why those 2 things?  I had them on hand and the chicken had to be cooked, got 3 in a delivery on Wednesday and no where in the freezer to store them.  So it's chicken, chicken, chicken for the next couple of days.

Chicken Ingredients

1 spatchcocked chicken, (fancy way of saying take out the backbone, flip over and push on the front                  to have it lie flat).  

I got these on a whim from Wegmans

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1/4 t pepper

1 T olive oil

Paste

1.5 t  garlic cloves, crushed to a paste

1 t harissa paste

1 t pesto paste

1 t sun dried tomato paste

salt and pepper

Mix together all of the paste ingredients before adding salt and pepper, taste, and if necessary, add salt and pepper

Loosen the skin on the breast and thighs of the chicken, put 1/2 of the paste under both sides of the breast skin, split the remaining paste between the thighs and drumsticks.

Smooth out the skin to cover the meat.  In a small bowl mix the baking soda, salt, pepper, and oil. Rub this onto the top of the skin.  The baking soda changes the pH of the skin and should make it very crisp.  

Cauliflower

1 large head of cauliflower, trimmed of leaves and cored, keeping head intact

1/2 t salt

1/2 t pepper

1/2 t garlic powder

1/2 t onion powder

1/2 t sweet paprika, not smoked

cooking spray

Spray the cauliflower all over with the cooking spray.

Mix the spices together in a small bowl and sprinkle all over the cauliflower.

Heat grill to 300°F and put both things onto the grates.  If you would like, put a thermometer into the thigh of the chicken away from the bone and close the lid.  

Check on it and it should be done when the temp in the thigh is 175 - 180° F and the breast registers 165°F.

Note:  The skin never crisped up.  Not sure why, perhaps I needed to have some high heat action at some point.  So I used a blow torch to brown the skin up nicely.

the cauliflower was not cooked all the way either.  The pellet grill needs some work in terms of me understanding how to utilize it best.