5/26/2021 – This dish was inspired by the recipe here. We liked it although it needed more peaches.
Continue reading5/24/2021 – This Frittata turned out very good and was made with one of our first zucchini this year.
5/27/2021 – Made it with 6 eggs, more veggies including mushrooms and shredded “Italian” cheese blend. The ingredients, directions, and Next Time ideas below are for this cook as it has great potential.
Ingredients
- 6 extra-large eggs
- about ¼ cup of half-and-half
- 1 medium zucchini (about 8″ long) from our garden
- 2 young onions from our garden
- 1 cup of portabello mushroom chopped
- about ½ cup of shredded “Italian” cheese blend or grated parmesan cheese
- Kit’s Creole seasoning
- Course ground black pepper and salt to taste
Directions
- With a wire whisk beat the eggs with the half-and-half, cheese, and creole seasoning
- Peel the zucchini leaving strips of the green peel for color. Dice it into ¼-½” cubes.
- Chop the onions into ¼”-½” pieces
- Saute the zucchini and onion in bacon grease in a No. 6 cast iron skillet with 4-5 shakes of creole seasoning. Saute until the edges begin to soften.
- Poured the egg mixture over the veggies on 5/27 although on 5/24 mixed the veggies into the eggs and stir to evenly distribute the veggies.
- On 5/24 added 2 tablespoons of butter to the skillet and when melted return the egg/veggie mixture. On 5/27 there was a lot of moisture and seemed to be plenty of bacon grease. But, it stuck to the skillet somewhat.
- On 5/27 put the skillet into a preheated 300° convection oven for about 30 minutes. It puffed up like a souffle. On 5/24 reduced the heat, cover, and cook until firm. Be careful to not cook too fast like Tom did this time.
Next Time
- Rather than cook it on the stovetop with a cover, cook it in the oven to make sure a dark hard “crust” is not created.
- Lightly shake on some more creole seasoning when put into the oven.
- Be sure to add the creole seasoning to the eggs and the veggies.
- Try it with 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce in the egg mixture.
This was inspired by Mike Hultquist at https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/recipes/creamy-jalapeno-sauce/
This creamy jalapeno sauce recipe uses no dairy or avocado, yet it is super creamy and wonderfully spicy. It’s an emulsification of jalapenos and oil and you’ll find it used widely in Tex-Mex cuisine. It is definitely one of my favorites, and incredibly easy to make.
Ingredients
8 fresh jalapeno peppers about 12 ounces by weight
1 small red onion chopped (about 6 ounces)
4-5 garlic cloves
½ cup Neutral oil use corn oil, avocado oil, or a neutral vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Slice the stems from the jalapeno peppers and add them to a medium-sized pot along with the onion.
- Cover with water and bring to a quick boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the jalapeno peppers soften up. They will turn dull green and you can pierce them with a fork easily, but do not let them become mushy.
- Strain but keep the liquid on hand.
- Add the boiled jalapenos and onion to a food processor along with garlic, oil, and salt. Process until very smooth and creamy, about 4-5 minutes.
- If you’d like a thinner sauce, add in a few tablespoons of the reserved boiling water.
Yields 2+ cups.
Bryan h February 29, 2020
This is a good version..BUT! As a south Texan let me tell you how this is REALLY made here by tejanos. Take your jalapeños and instead of boiling them (wth!) you roughly chop them and put them in a medium hot pan just lightly coated with oil. Allow them to sear without any browning! Stirring frequently until slightly soft and withered. Take out and put to the side. In the still hot pan do the same technique with a quarter of a WHITE OR SWEET Texas onion and a few cloves of garlic. Again do not brown them. Once done blend together in processor with neutral or olive oil with a small amount of salt to taste. This is the way it’s really done here. You’ll find the flavor to be much better than boiling.
5/4/2021 – We made this based on a copycat recipe for the popular dish at Olive Garden. Many things are different from that copycat version as this is a Cajun version while that was more of an Italian version. What we made was very rich and much enjoyed. This made 6 servings…lotsa leftovers!!!
Continue reading4/17/2021 – This chili turned out good and was inspired by the James Beard recipe in our copy of his book Barbeque with Beard on page 163. With all the peppers we added it turned out to have some kick but not too much for us. This is a true Texas Chili other than the addition of our canned tomatoes.
Continue readinghttps://www.rouses.com/cooking/recipes/paella/ 2/4
Ingredients
- Bunch flat-leaf parsley leaves from the garden, chopped. Reserve some for garnish.
- 1 10-oz. can ROTEL Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes and Green Chilies, drained
- 2 cups jasmine rice
- 4 cups water, warm
- 1 pound jumbo Gulf shrimp, peeled and deveined. Wet brine for about 2 hours in about 3 cups of cold water with 1 tbsp of Kosher Salt.
- 1 pound of boneless chicken thighs, dry brined for a couple of hours then cut into 1″ cubes
- 2 chunks of our Tasso
- 4 teaspoons oregano, separated
- 1 pkg frozen mixed veggies, thawed
- Lemon wedges, for serving. From the garden then frozen but served thawed. Also, garnish with the reserved parsley.
DIRECTIONS
- Combine 1 tablespoon paprika and 2 teaspoons oregano in a small bowl. Rub the spice mix all over the chicken. Cover tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate seasoned chicken for 1 hour.
- Heat olive oil in a paella pan over medium-high heat.
- Saute the sausage until browned; remove and reserve.
- Add the chicken and brown on all sides. Add salt and freshly ground pepper. Remove from pan and reserve.
- In the same pan, saute the onions, garlic, tasso, and parsley in olive oil. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes on medium heat. Then add the Rotel and cook until the mixture caramelizes a bit and the flavors meld.
- Add the chorizo, smoked sausage, and chicken. Fold in the saffron rice and stir-fry to coat the grains. Pour in water and simmer for 10 minutes, gently moving the pan around so the rice cooks evenly and absorbs the liquid.
- Add the shrimp, stirring them into the rice. Give the paella a good shake to settle it down and let it simmer, without stirring, until the seafood is cooked and rice is barely done; i.e. about 15 minutes.
- When the paella is cooked and the rice looks fluffy and moist, turn the heat up for 40 to 80 seconds, until you can smell the rice toast at the bottom.
- Remove from heat and rest for 5 minutes. Garnish with parsley and lemon wedges.
4/1/2021 – This was a great dish inspired by the recipe at Rouses. The recipe at Rouses has more steps in the last half of the process from the point where we added the butter well before they do. All that could make a difference. We enjoyed it a lot this way and it seemed to make sense to saute the shrimp in the wine/shell brine, garlic, and peppers. It also made sense to not whip out the great flavors from the sauteed shells in the wine.
This was the first time to brine shrimp and perhaps that contributed to their being perfectly cooked. Perhaps the salt held in the water as it does with beef and pork thereby giving more latitude in the cooking time so they do not overcook so easily.
Continue reading3/31/2021 – Our Multiplying Onions and Bunching Onions in Mary’s Garden are bolting so we pickled some to for use when those are gone and the ones planted in the big garden with Piper and Olivia are still maturing. What we did, within an hour of pulling and washing them, was as follows:
Continue reading3/30/2021 – When thinking about how to use some large chicken thighs, Mary decided to roast them over onions, cabbage, and carrots. This one-dish meal turned out great and will be made again. The ingredients were assembled in a large cast-iron skillet that helped create the rich flavors of roasted chicken plus the rich flavors of the vegetables. The vegetables cooked quickly at the roasting heat under the thighs that added their melted fat to almost sear the vegetables in the bacon grease and chicken fat. Given the quick cook at the roasting temperatures the vegetables maintained some firmness; i.e. not mushy. We must give credit to Marion’s Kitchen’s “Smoky Sriracha + Lime” Chicken Marinade that contributed a lot to the dish.
This is an enhanced version of the simpler recipe here.
Continue reading3/2/2021 – Kelley and the girls are arriving in 12 days and will be here for Spring Break week. She talks often about the Rueben Sandwiches we made with my homemade Pastrami in Houston. So, this prep will follow the last one that is the post Corn Beef-Pastrami–5th Time. Hard to believe that was in 2017.
This time it is made with two small points bought trimmed from Winn-Dixie. I did a bit more trimming to remove some heavy hard fat layers but not much.
The Curing Calculator provided the following that was mixed and shaken on evenly.
- Meat – 2229 gm (5.06 lbs.)
- Cure #1 @6.25% – 5.56 grams – Measured with small accurate digital scale.
- Salt @ 2% – 39.36 grams
- Sugar at 1% – 22.29 grams
- Total – 2296.22 grams
Then mixed the following and sprinkled it evenly over the meat and on top of the above cure & seasoning.
- 1 Tbsp garlic powder – (wish I had had granulated and used 1½ T)
- ¼ tsp Ground Cloves
- 3 Bay Leaves chopped small
- 1 tsp rounded ground Coriander
- ½ tsp rounded Yellow Mustard Seeds
- 1 tsp thyme
- 1½ Tbsp cracked black pepper.
Put them into separate one-gallon zip lock bags and into the outside refrigerator to cure for two weeks; i.e. until Tuesday, March 16th.
3/16/2021 – Pastrami Rub
Prepared and rubbed on the Pastrami Rub made of:
- Part 1 – Roasted spices
- 2 Tbsp coarse ground black peppercorns
- 1 Tbsp Coriander Seed, cracked
- 1 tsp Allspice Berries, cracked
- 1 tsp Yellow Mustard Seed
Put the seed part of the rub (above) into a hot skillet and roasted while stirring until very fragrant. Then put them into a heavy glass measuring cup and added:
- Part 2
- 1 tsp heaping dry Thyme Leaves
- 1 tsp heaping of ground Bay Leaves
- 1 tsp Juniper Berries, chopped in half to release flavor and improve distribution
- 1 Tbsp dry minced Onion
- 1 Tbsp dry granulated Garlic
Mixed well then sprinkled on all sides of the two pieces of corned beef. Put the rubbed meat back in their zip-lock bags and back in the refrigerator for about 20 hours; i.e. St. Patrick’s Day. Note – Did not rinse off the initial rub/cure. Added this rub on top of the rub/cure mixture as done before.
3/17/2021 – The Smoke and Final Cook in the Oven
3/17/2021, 9:00 AM – Put them into the Weber Kettle with the SNS insert and pan and about 10 partially burning Kingsford Original Blue Bag charcoals in one end of the SNS. Added 2 small pecan limb chunks for smoke. Note – The 2017 smoke resulted in the point being “overdone” so we thought, but at the correct internal temp per the recipe being followed then.
The thinking for this cook is that previous one did not cook long enough or get hot enough to cause the colagen to break down. This cook will be at 210° to 240° bringing the internal temp up slowly.
1:00 PM – Removed the pieces from the smoker and wrapped in aluminium foil with ACV. Put them into the oven preheated to 250° with the temperature probe set to turn off at 190°.