Green Chili

I'm Back Out of Hibernation...


I hate to admit how much I hate how I've neglected this Cooking Blog after having such an enthusiastic start going on nearly FIVE YEARS AGO.

November 9th, 2004 to be exact.

That was the date of my first posting.

In celebration of five years of cooking blogging I thought I'd add my latest recipe to the page...a white chili I call my "Green Butt Chili"...

except this batch was made with pork tenderloin because I was lazy and didn't feel like brining and cooking a whole Boston Butt yesterday afternoon.

Maybe this batch was just "Green Chili" or even "White Chili", but HEY...it's MY Chili and I'll call it whatever I want to, dang it.

So any way, I'm cooking chili for two reasons right now.

1.Because the weather has cooled off and...

2. I have to get started with a new recipe for next year's Chili Cookoff on St. Simons with my buddy and fellow Georgia Tech Alumni, John Howton, owner of Blackwater Grill there on the island.

Our last season's chili based on top round steak (see recipe in the next older posting) won second place "People's Choice" but didn't place with the so called "official judges," so as a result I'm wanting to change directions and try something different in anticipation of getting equal or greater attention at this coming year's event.

To that end, yesterday I put together a batch of "white" i.e. non beef based chili that was made up of the following ingredients:

3/4 to 1 pound pork tenderloin, cut into 1" thick steaks (you could use boneless chicken breasts also if you like)

(2) mild Hungarian or banana peppers, diced into 1/4" cubes
(3) large green tomatillos, diced into 1/4" cubes

(2) 14 ounce cans chicken stock
(2) 14 ounce cans beef stock
(1) 14 ounce can white Hominy Corn
(2) 14 ounce can cannelloni beans
1/2 14 ounce can tomato sauce
(1) 12 ounce can Goya Reciato Cilantro sauce


Spices:
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp green bell pepper powder
1/2 tbsp red chili powder
1/4 tbsp black pepper


Now as the procedure...RELAX...it's not rocket science...

Sprinkle your pork tenderloins lightly with Cumin on both sides and toss them into the bottom of a 4 quart boiler with a little olive oil to sear and brown on both sides.

Meanwhile, over in a large heavy skillet heat up about a cup of peanut oil over medium heat and make yourself a blond Roux. I'm not going to go into the details other than to say you add flour until everything gets real thick and you STAND THERE AND CONTINUOUSLY STIR your mixture until it thickens...at least fifteen minutes did it for me.

Now turn down the heat on your Roux and pull your seared pork out of the big boiler onto a platter.

Toss your diced peppers and tomatillos into the roux and cook for ten or so minutes.

Stir, stir, stir.

Don't that look good?

When your green chunks are cooked and softened, dump one can each of chicken stock and beef stock into the skillet.

Stir some more.

When everything is combined good dump the contents of your skillet over into your 4 quart boiler (the one you seared your pork in) and scrape the bottom of the pot to get the tasty bits off.

Add the chili powders, cumin, and the pepper.

Stir.

Add one can of Cannelloni White beans and the can of Hominy and the tomato sauce.

Stir.

Now return your pork to the pot, add more stock if you need to, cover, and cook it for about an hour on medium low heat...until it is tender and starting to fall apart.

Is your pork falling apart?

Then pull the pieces out onto a platter and slice and tear it up with a knife and fork. Shred it as finely as you want to. I like a bunch of fine with a few larger junks just for the variety in my mouth.

Now add your pork back to the pot, dump in more chicken and beef stock if you need the liquid volume, and add the second can of Cannelloni Beans and the jar of Goya Recaito.

Finish your Chili by cooking it down another thirty to forty five minutes--until it's as thick as you like your Chili, then grab yourself a spoon and napkin and...

E A T


Regards Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

World Class Chili

Recipe By Request


Looking back, I find it to be somewhat amazing the circumstances which have produced some of my best recipes and cooking experiences over the past fifteen years since I began cooking on something other than a charcoal grill and moved into my kitchen almost full time for good portions of the week each week.

After my ten year apprenticeship spent learning which end of the spoon and ladle to put in a boiler or pot, and the difference between the spices Nutmeg and Cumin, the past five years have found me cooking larger and larger quantities of food for ever increasing crowds of people in a variety of venues--most recently...

PUBLIC venues.

With the assistance of Pat and my good buddy Rusty I've done a killer Mexican menu for over thirty people at our 2006 celebration of "Sies de Mayo" (actually an unintended insult to the illegal immigrants' Cinco de Mayo national holiday because the fifth of May that year fell on Friday.)

I've almost single handedly done Christmas dinner for seventeen during a recent holiday season including main courses and appetizers like Oysters Rockefeller.

Then this past holiday season I handled the main Chef duties for my soon to be defunct former employer's company Christmas party including about 24 guests and featuring Chateau Brianne, pan seared Salmon, and my signature Chicken picatta over angle hair pasta.

Now, on April fools day, I find my head spinning as we continue to move forward into 2009 and, looking back across the month of March, I seem to vaguely recall figuring out how to cook Chili for something like what...a THOUSAND people?

In preparation I cooked half gallon quantities of Chili three times in February to fine tune the recipe, then on March 7th my team man -handled 10 gallons of beef stock, 5 gallons of chicken stock, 40 pounds of top round roast cut into 1/2" steaks, and THIRTY pounds of ground beef and when put it was all installed into a giant pot, embellished with a ton of spices, and well stirred with a boat paddle; the concoction yielded what ended up being about THIRTEEN GALLONS of "Peoples Choice" award winning chili.





I don't care if I ever see another bowl of Chili for about two more months now, but I want to publish the recipe before I forget it and as a warning if you don't care about how to make my Chili you can stop reading right now, because "Virgil's World Class Competition Chili" recipe ensues:

To do about a half gallon batch of my "World Class" Chili in your home kitchen...You'll need...

Meat:
1-1/4 pound top round steak (about 1/2" thick)
1-1/4 pound ground beef or ground chuck

Other Stuff:
1 cup white wine
1 cup water
2 (14) oz cans beef stock
1 (14) oz cans chicken stock
1 (12) oz can tomato paste
2 (12) oz cans red beans (pureed in blender and reserved on the side until needed later)

Spice Blast #1

1 tsp Cayenne pepper
2 tsp flaked onions
1 tsp garlic powder
3 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp Wyler's Instant Beef Bouillon Granules
2 tsp Wyler's Instant Chicken Bouillon Granules

Spice Blast #2

3 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tsp Garlic Powder
2 tbsp Chili Powder
1 tsp white pepper
3 tbsp Goya Reciato (look for the green Cilantro sauce in the "ethnic food" isle at your local grocer)

Now...as to the process of making the Chili...

Toss your top round steak in a big boiler pot or dutch oven with the cup of wine and the cup of water.

Cook it covered for 1-1/2 to 2 hours over medium heat until it falls apart when you poke it with a fork..checking it often after about 75 minutes so you don't boil it dry.

Dump the cooked round steak out into a colander to drain, then break up your ground beef and render it in the same boiler/pot/dutch oven until it's cooked through.

Now dump it in a colander to drain (removing your round steak so you don't get it all greasy again.

Go through the round steak pulling out any "chewy" bits and break it up into 1/2" to 3/4" chunks or smaller so it will assimilate into the pot with the ground beef when the time comes.

Is your drained/degreased meat now sitting back in your boiler/pot/dutch oven?

Well then...put it back in there and set your burner heat on medium and dump in your beef and chicken stock.

Stir, stir, stir, stir...

Add the Tomato Paste.

Stir...

Now...While you're standing around drinking some wine or a beer and bragging about your favorite NASCAR driver or the College basketball final four, dump your red beans into your blender or a food processor and grind those suckers up until they look like baby food.

Now hold them (the pureed beans) on the side until you see how things work out in the next couple of hours.

Once everything is starting to simmer nicely on the stove top, dump in what I call "Spice blast #1."

Smell that?

Don't get too close or you'll hurt yourself...

Stir, Stir, stir and turn the heat down a little and put the lid on the pot.

Now go watch Fox News or CNN while your eyes roll back in your head for fifteen minutes.

Smell that?

Stop by and check on your chili every fifteen minutes and make sure there isn't any unexpected flames coming out of your pot.

Got a fire extinguisher handy?

Back to reality, cook things slowly for somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour, then add "Spice Blast #2."

If things start to thicken too much you can always add some more beef stock or chicken stock or if you're really cheep..WATER.

Now I have to leave things up to you from here on out.

Cook my Chili recipe down as thick or thin as you like and you can dump any or all of the pureed red beans in at any time to thicken the whole pot out and to increase the volume of the mixture--I use the beans as a filler rather than a basic ingredient, but be prepared to stay on top of things for the last half hour of the cooking process lest you screw things up and have to start over again.

in the mean time...

Bon Appetite...!!!

Why "The Redneck Gourmet"

My Original Posting from November 2004...Slightly Revised & Republished As An Intro

OK...I've basically neglected this space on the internet on and off now for slightly over four years ...BUT

People keep stopping by reading, and every once in a while someone likes what I write, so I'm in the slow process of cleaning it up and making it presentable even if I don't have anything new to say or I'm cooking instead of writing.

That said...here's the words that started it all back on November 9, 2004:

I’m from southern Alabama. Some people like to call it “lower Alabama,” or LA for short. Call it what you will, it was home for me growing up. The older I get, the more attractive it becomes as a place to live, but it hasn’t always been that way.

You see, when you grow up living in LA, you tend to sort of take it for granted. The people, the lifestyle, the land, the food; by the time you are eighteen years old, you have had enough of the “simple life” and Atlanta, Georgia (or “anywhere else” in the USA) seems to beat the heck out of Ozark, Alabama.

The problem is, when you get to college in Atlanta and you’ve spent your first seventeen years in Ozark, you generally don’t have a clue about fine dining. There weren’t exactly a bunch of French, Italian, Greek, Japanese, or Thai restaurants in LA, and where I come from, Sushi is what we call fish bait. We could, however, fix you up with some deluxe fried chicken, country fried cube steak, fresh vegetables, biscuits & gravy, and we did a mean sirloin steak on the grill (charcoal, not gas…thank you very much.)

Fine dining just takes awhile to learn, and the one thing I learned very quickly was that throwing money at the problem definitely did not guarantee results. There was nothing more disappointing in 1979 than having the opportunity to dine with a member of the fairer sex, throwing $40 of hard earned summer job cash at food and wine, and going home hungry and disappointed (about the food, we’re not discussing women here, guys—get your minds out of the gutter.)

Fortunately, over the past twenty-five years I have learned a thing or two about fine dining and how to use raw fish as something other than fish bait. I’ve had the opportunity to dine in many of the well known restaurants in the major cities of the US. The Redneck Gourmet is not a restaurant review blog, however.

The Redneck Gourmet is about good home cooking, but not necessarily grits and cubed steak. Just like finding that throwing money at dining out doesn’t guarantee results, I have found that having just any old recipe for a given dish doesn’t ensure your home cooking efforts will yield the desired results—a perfect home cooked meal with authentic seasoning and flavors.

To this end, I’d like to share my interest and ability in cooking high quality food in my own kitchen, and telling you, my (soon to be) devoted reader, how to do the same. I realize that the internet is loaded with good cooking sites, places like Food Network, Epicurious, and others that I have to compete with, but competition is not my intention. I just love to cook and I love to write and The Redneck Gourmet allows me to combine both of these passions into one exercise…and on Blogger.com, it’s free.

I really hope that you enjoy my efforts.

Virgil R. Rogers, III

Pizza Oscar

Recooked (And Slightly Re-Written)


Well...I did it again, and it came out quite well if I do say so myself.

By "It" I mean I produced a white pizza based on Crab, Chicken, asparagus, and Mozzarella Cheese with a white cream sauce for dinner last night.

First...a little history on the name of dishes with the surname "Oscar"--Chicken Oscar, Steak Oscar...etc.--on your local restaurant menu.

According to this web site, the original dish named "Oscar" was actually a form of Veal Oscar and was named for King Oscar II of Sweden who spent his time wandering around in Norway and Sweden until about 1907. King Oscar liked a dish which featured breaded fried Veal medallions, covered with crab meat and Asparagus spears, smothered in a cream sauce.

The rest, as we all like to say IS HISTORY.

So any way, back in November I was looking around the WWW and it became apparent to me that the common elements of dishes called "Oscar" were lump crab meat, asparagus, and some sort of sauce (Alfredo or Bearnaise) placed on top of a base meat.

I figured that instead of a base meat I would just use a Pizza crust, and as a result here's what I included in tonight's masterpiece:

• Three TBSP good extra Virgin Olive Oil
  


• Knorr Bearnaise Sauce (or make your own sauce if you want to torture yourself)
  


• 1-1/2 cups lump crab meat--preferably fresh from your local sea food market, drained well and spritzed with lemon juice and sprinkled with Old Bay Seasoning.
  


• One large chicken breast, sprinkled with Old Bay Seasoning and cooked in a skillet in some butter and bacon grease until done medium, then sliced into 1/4" thick pieces.
  


• One can Green Giant Asparagus (or par-boiled fresh Asparagus or even better yet...WHITE Asparagus which is what I read that the Good King Oscar liked on his Veal)
  


• One pound of good whole milk Mozzarella--sliced (please don't use that store bought plastic cheezy stuff you buy pre shredded in ziplock bags--get yourself a big block of Mozzarella and a sharp knife and do a little work while you're cooking.)
  


• 1/2 cup Shredded Parmesan cheese

First I made my basic pizza crust (which takes a couple of hours to put together and rise), then on top of this dough rolled out and formed into a nice round shape on a well seasoned pizza stone
I first drizzled my EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) and smeared it around with my fingers.

Next I placed my big thick slices of Mozzarella cheese around the crust and olive oil in a nice uniform pattern, then I loaded the sliced chicken pieces around on top and spread the lump crab meat all around over everything (just barely avoiding taking a bite of the raw crab--can you say Sushi?)

Finally I laid out the pre-cooked canned Asparagus spears around the top of the pizza radially-- like the hands of a clock--and smothered everything with my warm Bearnaise sauce.

After cooking everything for about 20 minutes in a 550 degree oven, I pulled my pizza out to cool for about five minutes, cut it into slices, and then we all CHOWED DOWN.

Pornographic photographic evidence of the event could be available later...

Stuffing Myself With Stuffed Chicken Breasts

A Surprising Dish


I was sitting around here on a lazy Sunday afternoon, trying to come up with something original to cook for dinner. Nothing fancy mind you, but just something different to help move me out of my year long cooking rut.

Since I already had some Perdue thin sliced chicken breast pieces that needed to be cooked or put into the freezer, I decided that stuffing my chicken parts with something was in order for the evening. A little internet surfing gave me a few good ideas, and after a quick trip to the grocery store, here’s what I did to make dinner for two.

Ingredients:

Six pieces of thin sliced chicken breast (or three medium boneless breast halves, pounded thin)

Three pieces thick sliced bacon

Nine thick (½”) slices of Portobello Mushroom cap
½ medium Shallot, diced thin
2 cloves garlic, minced
Three handfuls of baby spinach leaves
Two tablespoons butter

2/3 cup grated Parmesan Cheese
3 thick slices Whole Milk Mozzarella

Two tablespoons Butter
Three tablespoons Extra virgin Olive Oil
Flour--about ¼ cup
½ cup chicken stock
¼ cup white wine
4 tablespoons sherry
½ tsp salt
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

First toss a large skillet on the stove top over medium heat, and cook your bacon until it is nice and crisp.

Hold on there…SAVE THAT BACON GREASE… you’re gonna need it.

Once the bacon has been cooked and reserved to drain on the side, toss in a couple tablespoons of butter and sauté your mushroom slices and shallot for about ten minutes--five minutes per side. Now add your minced garlic and the baby Spinach, turn the heat down a little, and cover the skillet and let things cook for another five minutes or so.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 360 degrees, get your chicken out of the fridge, slice your Mozzarella and grate your parmesan.

Now that your mushroom/shallot/spinach mixture is done, pull the skillet off the heat and spoon it into a bowl on the side.

Put your skillet back on the heat, add your olive oil and butter, and once the butter has melted start sprinkling flour into the mixture. Scrape the bottom of the skillet to break loose all of the tidbits as you continuously stir your oil flour mixture. You’re making a basic roux, and you have to keep adding flour and stirring until it thickens and you get the color where you want it.

I made my roux a medium dark brown. Meanwhile, while your roux is cooking, lay a couple of thin slices of chicken out on a plate so they’re overlapping, top it with a slice of mozzarella, then spoon 1/3 of your spinach/mushroom/shallot mix on top. (If you use boneless chicken breast halves, just pound them out thin and top them as described.) Add 1/3 of your grated parmesan, then fold the sides of the chicken over and pin it all together with three or four toothpicks and place it fold side up in a greased casserole dish.

Do the same with the other chicken slices or pounded breast pieces, then toss the whole thing in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes.

Back at the skillet, once you’re satisfied with the thickness and color of your roux, kick the heat up a notch and dump in your white wine and chicken stock.

Sizzle, sizzle, scrape scrape.

Add your salt and a few twists of black pepper, and keep stirring as the liquid evaporates and things thicken back up. I called this a sauce, but I guess that it really is more of a sophisticated gravy mix.

Now turn down the heat and let things coast while the chicken bakes, adding the Sherry during the last five minutes, and giving things a nice stir on about five minute intervals also.

Kick the oven up to broil for the final couple of minutes, then when your chicken is up to about 155 degrees F, pull it out and let it rest on the cutting board while your plates heat up in the oven.

Put the plates on chargers, slice your chicken into three or pieces pieces each, top with a generous portion of your sauce, grab yourself a fork, and EAT.

Regards Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Note To Self

Killer Pizza Toppings


Here, take my Pizza crust recipe and then do this:

Hawaiian

1 14 oz can tomato sauce
Tomato paste
Salt to taste
White pepper
½ tbsp sugar '

Heat it all up in a boiler, then add on top:

1 lb mozzarella cheese
1 small can pineapple pieces
½ package diced ham


Or this:

Italian, Phase II…

Tomato sauce:

1 can Hunt's petite diced tomatoes
1 small can tomato sauce
Whole bunch of Dried Oregano
Dried Basil
Salt to taste
Red pepper flakes to taste
1 tablespoon sugar

1 lb mozzarella cheese

Olive oil to cover raw crust

Thin sliced pepperoni to cover sauce covering olive oil covering crust

Diced green onion
Small can Sliced green olives
Small can Diced black olives
Small can Mushroom pieces and parts

4 oz juicy feta cheese

490 Degree oven for 20 minutes on a stone

EAT!

Regards, Y'all

The Redneck Gourmet

Italian Pork Chop Caserole

A One Dish Wonder


Late last week I was wandering down the meat isle of our local grocery store, looking for bargains, when I noticed packages of little boneless pork chops "buy one, get one free." They were sliced about 1/4" to 3/8" thick, had a nice pink color, and I just couldn't resist.

Two packages came home with me.

Thin little chops like these cook in just a couple of minutes on each side in the skillet, and it's easy to over cook them and dry them out if you're not careful, so I started poking around the Internet looking for something different to do with four of my little chops for dinner tonight.

I came upon this recipe for something called "Italian Pork Chops," but I wanted something a little heartier, so I made a few modifications and here's what I came up with for dinner.

four pork chops
one link of andouille sausage (or Italian sausage)
five medium sized red potatoes
28 oz can of petite diced tomatoes
12 oz can of cream of Mushroom Soup
dried tarragon
one cup of shredded cheese (I used Swiss and Parmesan, but most any kind will work)
bread crumbs

First wash and slice up your potatoes into 1/8" slices and toss them in a pot of cold salted water to soak for a few minutes. I leave the skins on my new potatoes because I like the texture and flavor, but feel free to peal yours if you want to.

Now grate up your cheese and start heating up a medium boiler of water for the potatoes and a large skillet on high to sear the pork chops and sausage in.

Dump the water off the potatoes down the sink, then place the drained potatoes into the pot of hot water on your stove top and bring them to a rolling boil to pre cook them slightly.

Toss the chops into the hot skillet with a little olive oil and sear them lightly on both sides, being careful not to cook them too much or they'll be tough when they're done baking later.

The sausage should be seared also, but you don't have to be as careful and you can give it some nice color if you want, then pull it out of the skillet and slice it into 1/8" to 1/4" thick slices.

Take your potatoes off the stove and pour them out into a colander to drain well.

Now you can start putting your dish together. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 13" x 13" Pyrex dish with your favorite fat. I used spray olive oil.

Now layer half of your potato slices evenly in the bottom of your dish, then lay your little pork shops and the sausage slices on top in a nice layer and sprinkle with about a half teaspoon of dried tarragon.

Spoon the can of Cream of Mushroom Soup over your meat and potato layers and smooth it out.

Sprinkle in a little of your grated cheese if you want to. I saved all of mine for the topping.

Now layer the last of your potatoes across the top of everything, then spoon the diced tomatoes out over the dish. Crack a little fresh black pepper over the top of it all, and sprinkle with another half teaspoon of dried tarragon and some dried basil and parsley if you're in the mood.

Step back from the stove to admire your work.

Isn't that pretty?

It gets better... spread your grated cheese evenly over the top...now THAT looks Yummy.

Set your timer for 40 minutes, pop your dish in the oven, and go watch TV or surf the Internet or play with the dog or something while your casserole cooks. How about washing your car?

After 40 minutes, pull the dish out and sprinkle about 3/4 cup of bread crumbs on top of the melting cheese, then put it back in the oven and cook it for another 20 minutes.

For the last three minutes I kicked the oven broiler on to give the bread crumbs a nice color, then pulled it out and let it cool for about ten minutes.

If you can remember where you put your pork chops, try to dive in with a giant spoon or spatula and scoop out a nice slab of everything. If it falls apart, just spoon it out in a pile, then grab yourself a fork and napkin and EAT.

Regards Y'all

The Redneck Gourmet

Pizza Revelation

A Saturday Night Tradition...


After doing virtually nothing all day today (as opposed to getting virtually nothing done), I fired up the new oven and worked on my thin crust pizza recipe. The solution is coming along nicely, and I feel good enough about things to publish it for public consumption.

Here's what you need to make a nice 15" thin crust pizza...

For the starter dough:

1/4 cup of 110 degree F water1 pack of yeast

3/4 cup of flour

For the main dough:

3/4 cup of room temperature water

1-1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
pinch of sugar

Toppings

(add or subtract as you like, but you really should try this combo unless something on the list gives you hives or makes your spleen rupture or something...):

olive oil

1 pound whole milk mozzarella cheese, cut into little blobs and evenly distributed
Enough pepperoni slices to cover the affected area
Four (4) strips of bacon, fried crisp and crumbled
1 small chicken breast half--pan seared to about 140 degrees and diced into 3/8" cubes
A couple of hand fulls of baby spinach leaves
Fresh sliced mushrooms
3/4 cup of diced colored bell peppers (I used orange, Red, AND Yellow)
1/2 cup sliced red onion
1 small can of sliced black olives
6 oz of crumbled feta cheese (put it right on top of everything when you're finished)

First things first.

Put your yeast in the warm water, stir it up well, and let is sit for about fifteen minutes.

Once you have a bunch of hungry yeast breasties, howling for something to eat, dump your yeast/water mixture into your 3/4 cup of starter flour, stir it up to form a blob of dough, cover it with a clean dishtowel, and walk away and ignore it while it rises for a half hour or so.

Make yourself a nice glass of iced tea or open a beer and watch TV while you wait.

Now here's the difference between thick and thin crust...

You DON'T do a secondary rise on the dough. It's just that simple.

You dump your 3/4 cup of water into your starter dough to dilute, stir it all up, then pour it into a medium mixing bowl with your flour, salt, and sugar mixture.

Stir, stir, stir.

Do you have a stiff, yet slightly wet dough mixture yet?

No?

Then add a LITTLE flour or water until you get it right, then dump it all out onto a floured surface and start working it over with your hands.

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees F.

Now the idea is to incorporate some more flour into the slightly wet dough, ending up with extra on the outside surfaces as you begin to flatten it out to form a crust. After two or three minutes of kneading, break out your rolling pin and roll things out to a nice uniform disk about 18" in diameter and 1/4" to 3/8" thick (I use a 15" pizza stone to cook on.)

When you're finished rolling, pick up your crust and carefully place it on your pan or stone (dusted well with flour), then fold and pinch the extra 1-1/2" of dough over around the edges to form a rim on the crust.

Next spoon out some olive oil (a table spoon or two) onto the middle of your masterpiece and smear it around the area inside the rim, then add your cheese, meat, and veggies, toss the whole thing into the oven for 17 to 20 minutes (depending on your oven), pull it out and let it cool a little, cut it into slices, then grab yourself a napkin and EAT.

Regards Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Collard Greens

I'm Happier Than A Pig In Mud


It's truely amazing the things that life will throw at you when you least expect it.

Take what happened to me at the theater last Friday as an example. Out of the blue, Rob, one of the Ritz Theater employees, walked up to me with two grocery bags full of fresh home grown collard and spinach greens and just GAVE them to me.

One of the other theater employees had grown them and everyone in the building was either crazy else they didn't cook so by default I inherited the sacks of green treasure.

I acted like Wyle E. Coyote, "Super Genius", and ran away with them as fast as I could, but Pat made me wait until tonight to cook them. After lovingly being hand washed in cold water to remove any bugs and most of the sand that was present, they're now sitting comfortably in some 212 degree F water simmering away with the Pork Ham Bone left over from Thanksgiving.

It's not rocket science...just water, salt, pepper, and a few hours of cooking slow.

Enjoy Y'all

The Redneck Gourmet

Prosciutto Wrapped Rosemary Grilled Shrimp & Sea Scallops

It Makes My Mouth Water Just Writing About Them


I did something a little different last evening for dinner, and you can thank my friend Brad for giving me a big bag of fresh Rosemary last week in order to supply me with the inspiration.

I had already bought four GIANT Sea Scallops on Friday and I had a few pounds of frozen shrimp in the Freezer, and with the addition of the Rosemary and some Proscuitto Ham, here’s what I did to make a hearty meal for two.

You’ll need the following ingredients:

Four to Eight Sea Scallops (you decide based on their size)
A dozen or so medium headless pealed shrimp
Thinly sliced, cured Prosciutto Ham
A couple of Fresh Lemons, or bottled lemon juice
Fresh sprigs of Rosemary (the number based on your scallops and shrimp quantity)
Salt and pepper to taste (be careful with the salt, because the Prosciutto is generally salty)

Now as to the preparation:

This meal is really easy. Peal your shrimp (leaving the tails on if you want) and place them and the scallops in a bowl and sprinkle them with salt, pepper, and a few tablespoons of lemon juice.

Now go watch TV for a while or take a walk--give your seafood at least a half hour to swim around in the marinade, and take the time to dump some charcoal into your grill and get yourself a nice fire started.

Once you get tired of waiting on your briny friends, pull them out of your bowl and wrap a piece of prosciutto around each scallop, and slice a few pieces of the ham up to wrap around the pealed shrimp.

Redneck tip: Use your judgment on the size of the Prosciutto pieces based on what you want to eat and how you want them to look when you get done. Make at least one and one half passes around each piece so they won’t come unwrapped on the grill.

Next, take a few spears of rosemary, peal the leaves off of two or three inches of the woody stems, and insert one stem through each wrapped scallop in order to pin your Prosciutto wrapper in place.

Do the same thing with the shrimp, except you can put four to six wrapped shrimp on each Rosemary skewer.

By now your grill should be nice and hot, so brush the grate off real good, brush on a light coat of olive oil on everything, and lay a sheet of aluminum foil over on one side to deflect the flames away from your Rosemary leaves.

Grill everything for three to five minutes on each side, then when you think it’s done, pour yourself a club soda or a nice cocktail, grab yourself a fork, and EAT.

Regards Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Fried Dill Pickles

More Weird Stuff From My Life

Pat and I have become friends with many of our neighbors that have been coming down here to St. simons Island on vacation for most of the past thirty years or so. Many are the children or other relatives of the original owners of the condos we live in, so many people that we end up hanging out with at the pool basically grew up here in the summers and holidays.

We’re only spending our third summer here, but we're fortunate that we’ve been adopted into the “Sea Palms Colony Clan” and now they’re starting to make demands of me and my cooking talents.

I’ve already hosted a couple of what I call my “Drive By, Pool Side BBQ’s” over the past couple of years, and now some of the wives are starting to challenge me with specific recipes and dishes that they like, that they eat in the local restaurants, or that they otherwise enjoy.

Most recently, the topic at the pool has been something called “Fried Dill Pickles.”

Well, you know me and my big mouth…I said that it had to be easy, and when the dust settled I was forced to spend this evening figuring out how to fry a dill pickle—because I’ll be serving them poolside tomorrow afternoon.

It turns out that it really is easy, and after surfing the internet to look at some examples, here’s what I came up with to fry me some dill pickles this evening:

1 egg
½ cup of milk
1 tbsp Crystal hot sauce
½ tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
½ tsp salt
½ tsp white pepper
½ tsp black pepper
½ tbsp flour

1 cup of flour

1 quart of dill pickle wedges

Enough oil (peanut, canola, or Crisco) to make a puddle ¾” deep

First things first…toss your oil into a deep skillet or a shallow boiler and crank up the heat on the stovetop so that you can get somewhere near 350 degrees F. Temperature is your friend here, so use a candy thermometer or whatever other appliance you have to check your oil temperature else you’ll have greasy, floppy, limp dill pickles.

As I understand it, women hate limp pickles…fried or otherwise…but I digress…

Next, beat your egg up real good in a medium mixing bowl, then add the milk and spices and stir it all up.

In a separate bowl, dump in your flour, and add a little salt and pepper if you want to. I actually added a little cayenne pepper just to add a little Emeril style “bam” to the mixture.

Once your oil has heated, dredge your pickle wedges in the flour, then into the egg/milk mixture, then back into the flour, then do it all over again. Build yourself a nice thick coating of batter on the outside of your pickles.

Now toss them into the oil a half dozen at the time, and watch them sizzle away, turning them once or twice until they are golden brown. Lay them in groups on a stack of paper towels on a plate on the side to drain and cool.

Sprinkle a little salt and cayenne pepper over them, maybe make a horseradish sauce or mustard sauce for dipping, and step out of the way of the stampede because THESE THINGS ARE TASTY.

I can hardly wait to put my cooking where my mouth is tomorrow afternoon.


Regards y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Moroccan Chicken With Apricot Couscous and Olive Tapenade

Live From Cassablanca...


I’ve always been fascinated with the Northern African country of Morocco. Forget places like London, Paris, and Rome; if I had the time and money I’d head straight to Portugal, and then when I was through drinking all of the Port wine I could consume I would catch a commuter plane or ship and head down to Casablanca.

Then I’d hang out with all the other Bogart and Bergman fans at “Ricks” sipping Sherry & Cognac while listening to Sam’s replacement pianist “playing it again.”

Unfortunately, since Morocco is something like 97% Muslim, I think it best to keep my white Redneck butt here stateside for the time being.

Not to worry, however, because I can always cook Moroccan food here at home and pretend that I’m looking out at the Mediterranean or far side of the Atlantic. I’ve done it three times recently, and I think that I have the process down to an art now.

Take a look at this recipe for Moroccan Chicken with Apricot Couscous and Green Olive Sauce in Flatbread.

I cooked my own version again last week, and let me tell you—I ate more at one sitting that I have in months if not years. The whole condo smells like a Moroccan Bazzar (without the camel dung) from the unique aroma of the spices involved.

Here's what you need to do to make dinner for two. First I made up a big batch of the spice blend which includes:

2 tsp Cinnamon
24 Whole Cloves
2 tsp Cayenne Pepper
6 tsp Cumin seed
3 tsp Fennel seed
3 tsp Coriander
3 tbsp Sweet paprika
4 tsp Kosher salt
3 tsp Brown sugar

Two boneless chicken breasts (or one breast per person if you’re having friends over)

A couple cloves of garlic, diced fine
1 lemon, quartered
A hand full of fresh cilantro, stemmed
Kosher salt and black pepper
Olive oil

1 cup of couscous
1-1/2 cups chicken broth
½ cup diced dried apricots
¼ cup toasted almond slices
2 hands full of fresh mint leaves
2 hands full of fresh cilantro
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
2 green onions—green parts only, diced
Kosher salt and black pepper to taste


For the Olive Tepenade you need:

1 small can of green olives
1 small can of black olives
½ shallot, diced fine
1 handfull fresh parsley
1 tbsp sherry
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp lemon juice
olive oil

A Bag of Pita Bread


First things first…put all of your spices (everything but the salt and brown sugar) in a skillet and heat it up to bring out the oils. Next add the salt and brown sugar and run everything through a spice mill or food processor to grind it up.

Instead of a whole chicken, I took some boneless chicken breasts and coated them with the spice mixture, then wrapped them up around lemon wedges, diced garlic, and cilantro; then pinned them together with toothpicks and baked them in a 350 degree oven for about twenty minutes (until the inside temperature was 155 degrees F.)

While you’re waiting on the chicken to cook, make the couscous by bringing your chicken stock to a boil, then turn off the heat and add your couscous. Let it sit about 15 minutes, then dice up your apricots, almonds, mint, cilantro, and green onions, and stir them into your couscous with a fork.

Make the Olive Tapenade by dicing your Shallots and parsley, then add them along with the sherry, rice vinegar, lemon juice, and olive oil to your food processor. Now puree it until it is smooth, smooth, smooth, adding your olive oil to assist the process.

Now put your chicken on a plate, toss a helping of couscous on the side, spoon some Olive Tapenade on your pita bread, sit down at the table, and EAT.

Regards Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Cinco de Mayo—Phase II

Breaking The Silence…


Hello…It’s me, your lovely and talented blog proprietor, breathlessly jumping back onto the keyboard here after nearly a month of absence from the Redneck Gourmet.

Don’t worry, nothing’s been wrong—I’ve just been busy taking care of some family business, participating in some non-cooking artistic endeavors, and cooking reruns…

most recently--MEXICAN Reruns…

About 60 hours from now I have to have 7 pounds of pork roast, 10 pounds of chicken breasts, 5 pounds of beef roast, and 5 pounds of flounder and Tilapia cooked and transformed into Beef, Pork, and Chicken Tamales; fancy Baja Style chicken and fish soft tacos; not to mention the Mexican rice and black beans and guacamole and four Key lime pies and salsa and the presentation details that have yet to be worked out.

All I have to say is…

AAAHHHHHHHHHHHH

There are at least thirty people that are going to be standing around on Saturday night with nothing to eat unless I can manage to pull all of this stuff together. Space in the Fridge and on the stovetop is at a premium for the next two days.

Wish me luck.

Regards Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Stuffed Pork Tenderloin—Phase II

Here…Try This…


I love stuffing myself with different kinds of “stuffed” food.

Things like Cheese Stuffed Pasta Shells, Spicy Stuffed Blue Cheese Burgers, and Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Chicken Breasts, are already in the archives here at The Redneck Gourmet.

Back in January when I first wrote about Stuffed Pork Tenderloin, I thought that I had a good recipe.

I was wrong, because this recipe, produced last evening out of our pantry and new refrigerator, is MUCH better.

Take a look at what I did…

The ingredients:

1 large chunk of pork tenderloin (about 2/3 to 3/4 pound) triple butterflyed

a splash of olive oil
½ granny smith apple, pealed and cut into ¼” cubes
¼ cup rasins
¼ cup dried apricots, chopped
¾ cup plain bread crumbs
2 strips bacon

¼ cup of chicken stock

And now, the procedure:

Marinade your pork tenderloin in your favorite combination of fluids for at least a half hour. I used orange juice, balsamic vinegar, and a little olive oil.

Toss your olive oil, raisins, apricots, and apple cubes into a heavy skillet over medium low heat. Once things start simmering, push the fruit to the side and add your two bacon strips.

Meanwhile, while your bacon is cooking, pull your tenderloin out of the marinade onto the cutting board and butterfly it—slice it out into a ½” to ¾” thick continuous slab of meat. The Butterfly process isn’t rocket science, but a good sharp knife and practice makes things easier.

Cook the bacon until it is done, but not crispy, then turn off the heat to the skillet, pull the bacon out onto a plate on the side to drain, and add your bread crumbs to the remaining contents of the skillet.

By the way, you can adjust the amount of bread crumbs that you use to get a moist mixture that will clump together, and you can spoon out some of the grease from the skillet before you add the bread crumbs if you are watching your health and waistline. (Since I have a death wish am a good southerner, I left ALL of my grease in the skillet.)

Lay your bacon strips out parallel to each other along the top of the tenderloin, and after your skillet miixture has cooled a little so you don’t burn yourself, spoon it out on top of the bacon onto the tenderloin in a nice even layer.

Now carefully roll up the tenderloin around the stuffing mixture into a spiral, sort of like a cinnamon roll. Secure your stuffed tenderloin with bamboo skewers or tie it up with butchers twine, and pack any of the stuffing that tries to leak out and get away from you back into the sides of the rolled up package.

Pour yourself a nice glass of wine while your oven preheats to 375 degrees F.

Don't get impatient, because you’re in the home stretch now—place your tenderloin in a shallow, greased, casserole dish, pop it into the oven, and cook it until the internal temperature is 160 degrees F (about 30 minutes in my oven.)

Heat up some frozen vegetables on the stovetop while you’re waiting, or toss some cut up red potatoes in the casserole dish beside the tenderloin like I did.

Once your pork is at 160 degrees, pull it out of the oven and place it on your cutting board to rest for five or ten minutes. Put your plates into the oven to warm.

When your pork is done resting, slice it into ¾” to 1” thick slices, toss it onto your warmed plates on chargers, grab yourself a fork, and EAT.


Regards Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Scallop Piccata

An Improvised Dish of Celebration


I'm pleased to report that, after a month in refrigerator induced "Appliance Hell," our lives are back to normal again.

Actually, things are better than normal, because we now have a shiny new 28 cubic foot side-by-side fridge sitting where the old piece of crap old one formerly resided.

I stood by here as long as I could today waiting on the old fridge to be removed, but I had to leave to run errands late this afternoon, and when I returned it was gone.

Hallelujah

Praise Allah

Amen Brothers & Sisters

Even though there are only two people in our household, our fridge is a VERY important part of our kitchen. I cook dinner five or six nights each week, prepare breakfast one or two days, and do a hot lunch two or three days each week.

I mean real cooking--not Hamburger Helper.

I was extremely concerned that we were going to lose $800 worth of frozen food and ingredients/condiments if we didn't get things straightened out, not to mention the added cost of eating out in the mean time.

Don’t get me wrong here—I love eating out, but the quality of MY food cooked at home generally exceeds that of all but the best restaurants here on the island.

In a restaurant, an equivalent dinner to that served at my house would cost you $15 to $20 each, without drinks, almost every single night.

Any way, it all worked out when it was all said and done.

I celebrated the arrival of our new appliance by stopping by the grocery store to buy some giant Sea Scallops and a big bag of baby Spinach, and when I got home I improvised a dish that I call Scallops Piccata. (It was based on my Chicken and Veal Piccata recipe.)

Try it out when you have the time (the quantities are for dinner for two):

Six Sea Scallops
2 tbsp lemon juice
Six strips of thick cut bacon
1 large bag of baby Spinach

8 oz (1/2 pack) Angle Hair pasta

1 cup white wine
¼ cup of Capers
1 clove of garlic, diced fine
2 tbsp lemon juice
¼ cup of Chicken stock
¼ stick of unsalted butter


First things first…

Since Scallops spend their time lying around on the bottom of the ocean in the sand, they are understandably…SANDY.

I don’t know about you, but since I don’t like gritty food, I recommend that you rinse those suckers, then rinse them again, and Again, and AGAIN, and when you’re done rinsing—toss them into a bowl with a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice.

Now let your Scallops swim around in the lemon juice in the fridge for a couple of hours if you have the time, thirty minutes as a minimum.

When you’re ready to start cooking, fire up your charcoal grill. (If you are a gas grill weenie, you can wait a few minutes and save your precious propane if you want to)

Next, heat up a large, heavy skillet on the stove top and cook your bacon strips until they are at least half way done. I like my bacon crispy, so I cooked it pretty well. (Save a little juicy fat on each strip for cooking on the grill.)

After you pull your bacon strips out, let them drain and cool on some paper towels on the side. Spoon any extra grease that you don’t want to eat out of the skillet. Being a good southerner, I left my bacon grease in the skillet.

Deglaze the skillet by pouring in the white wine and chicken stock, scraping the bottom with a spatula to remove any juicy bits.

Now add your capers and lemon juice and turn things down to a slow simmer.

Take your bacon strips and wrap one around each scallop, securing it with a couple of toothpicks.

Is your grill hot now?

No?

Well, then heat that sucker up…

then toss your bacon wrapped scallops on the grill and cook them on each side for eight or so minutes, being careful not to burn them.

Put your Angel Hair pasta in a boiler of lightly salted water with a little butter or olive oil. Be careful not to overcook it, it only needs about three or four minutes because it’s so fine.

Put your plates in the oven to warm.

Meanwhile, back at the skillet, when your scallops are almost done, open your bag of baby Spinach and dump it in on top of your sauce.

Stir, stir, stir…you want the spinach to wilt.

Now comes the fun part…plating it all up.

Put your warm plates on chargers, pile half your drained pasta on each plate, spoon out the wilted spinach on the pasta, and top with three grilled bacon wrapped scallops.

Pour your wine/caper sauce over the top of everything. Doesn't that look nice?

Well then, sit down at the table, grab yourself a fork, and EAT.

Try not to pass out before you push back from the table…


Enjoy Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Strawberry Key Lime Pie

Don’t Anyone Get Between Me And My Key Lime Juice


Did you know that you can make a WHOLE Key Lime Pie in less than 30 minutes?

Did you know that you can make a WHOLE Key Lime Pie for about $6.00?

Further, if you are a cheep-skate like me and you don't mind making your own pie crust, did you know that you can cut the cost down to about $4.50.

That said, does anyone but me wonder why the heck a slice of Key Lime Pie costs you $5.00 in most restaurants?

Maybe they have to send someone to fly each day down to Key West and pick their own little Key limes and escort them back to their kitchen or something. That could explain the cost.

And why are these expensive pie slices colored GREEN?

The natural color of a Key Lime Pie comes out pale yellow when I make one.

Is the green color the result of radioactivity, or possibly food coloring?

Then again, maybe the high cost is due to labor.

I know from personal experience that juicing those little suckers (key limes) requires the patience of Job. The seeds are tiny and almost impossible to pick out of the juice without a fine mesh strainer, and it takes over a dozen of the little suckers to get an entire pie’s worth of juice.

I gave up juicing little limes last year once I found out that I could drive over to the grocery store and buy a bottle of Nellie and Joe’s Famous Key West Lime Juice.

This stuff is WONDERFUL.

One 16 fluid ounce bottle is said to contain the juice of at least 26 key limes. Based on my experience, it seems more like about 4 dozen of the tiny, tart citrus fruits.

Any way, I got bored last week and started thinking about doing something a little different with Key Lime Juice, and as usual—a trip to the grocery store was the answer.

What I found was that they are practically giving away Florida strawberries right now, so I bought two big packages of berries along with some other stuff, and a new form of Key Lime Pie resulted.

This recipe is EXTREMELY simple, so don’t blink your eyes or you’ll miss it.

All you need are these Ingrediants:

½ cup of Key Lime Juice
(1) 14 oz can Eaglebrand Sweetened Condensed Milk
(3) egg yolks
(1) cup pureed strawberries (drained well)

Sliced strawberrys and/or sliced kiwi fruit for garnish
A few leafs of fresh mint for garnish

(1) 8” or 9” pie crust (I used a Nabisco “Nilla” Pie crust)


You ready to make a pie now?

Fire up your oven and set the temperature at 350 degrees F. Stir everything together, dump it into the pie crust, and bake for 20 minutes.

How simple is that?

Chill your pie for a few hours, slice it up, put it on chilled plates, and garnish it with the sliced strawberries, kiwi, and mint sprigs. Now grab yourself a fork and EAT!


Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Tiramisu

Almost Better Than Sex…

Well folks, I pleased to announce that I developed two new dishes for this year’s Valentine’s Day extravaganza at our house—and my efforts included a true “Redneck Gourmet” dinner last night consisting of Baked Eggplant Parmesan and a dessert called Tiramisu. Unfortunately I got so busy cooking the Eggplant dish that I completely forgot the Balsamic Vinegar dressed salad, but who noticed…??

I’m taking the liberty of cross posting the Tiramisu recipe that I improvised on my other blog, What I'd Liked To Have Said. The results were awesome, if I do say so myself. My only problem will be reproducing my results again with any consistency, but I’m gonna give it my best shot in the future.

And now…as to the ingredients:

For the coffee sauce:

1-1/2 to 2 cups strong, Strong, STRONG Coffee (make it double what you drink)
2 tsp sugar
3 tbsp Kahlua liqueur
2 tbsp Grand Mariner liqueur

For the Zabaglione filling (it’s basically a custard):

4 egg yolks
½ cup of sugar
½ cup Marsala Wine
(2) 8 OZ containers of room temperature Mascarpone Cheese
(1) cup heavy whipping crème

And Finally:

About 4 dozen ladyfingers
Bittersweet coco powder
Small block of semi-sweet dark chocolate

This looks tougher than it really is, just be patient, stay organized, and get ready to dirty up virtually every mixing bowl in your kitchen.

First you make your coffee. As I said in the recipe listing—STRONG coffee—even Espresso if you have a machine. Make the coffee ahead of time, stir in the sugar, and then let it cool off to room temperature. Now add your Kahlua and Grand Mariner. Dump the cooled mixture in a medium saucer or appropriately sized mixing bowl for later use.

Meanwhile your Mascarpone Cheese and your eggs should be sitting around on the countertop coming up to room temperature.

Crack your eggs and separate the yolks from the whites. Some Tiramisu recipes call for whipping up the whites and including them in the Zabaglione filling, but being the wasteful bastard that I am I just tossed my egg whites down the drain. I’m such a pig…

The egg yolks end up on the stovetop in a double boiler over medium heat. Ideally the water in the lower boiler doesn’t touch the bottom of the upper boiler. The idea is to whisk the egg yolks until they are nice and frothy, then add the ½ cup of sugar and the Marsela wine and keep whisking and cooking the mixture over the steam until it thickens, about 10 minutes on my stove.

When you have a minute you can take a spatula and mush up your Mascarpone Cheese in a large mixing bowl, and you need to beat your whipping cream with an electric mixer in YET ANOTHER MIXING BOWL until it forms stiff peaks.

Don’t worry too much, because you are NOW through dirtying up bowls and pots by now (I actually still had a dozen or so clean ones waiting in the wings if I needed them…), except for the 9” x 13” Pyrex dish that you are going to use to put the desert together in.

By now you should have one bowl of room temperature coffee, one bowl of well whipped “whipping crème”, and one bowl of Zabaglione filling.

Is that what you have? If not, step back from the stove and figure out where you went wrong.

After the Zabaglione filling has cooled off a bit, dump it into the bowl with the mascarpone cheese and mix it all up with the electric mixer.

Now “fold” your whipped crème into the mixture. By folding I mean not beating it with the mixer, just stir it up enough to combine it and get a uniform consistency. Don’t beat it to death or you will cause the crème to collapse.

Now comes the fun part—putting it all together.

One at a time, lightly dip both sides of your lady fingers into the coffee mixture, then neatly position ½ of them in the 9” x 13” pyrex dish to form a uniform single layer. Next you spoon ½ of your filling over the layer of ladyfingers and smooth it out. Now repeat the process with another full layer of ladyfingers, and top it all off with the rest of your filling mixture.

Smooth it out real nice and pretty.

Cover it with saran wrap and refrigerate for at least four hours (mine sat overnight.)

When you are ready to serve your Tiramisu, pull it out of the fridge, sprinkle the coco powder evenly over the top, and shave some of the bittersweet chocolate into “curls” with a vegetable peeler (it helps if you refrigerate the chocolate block for a half hour before cutting your “curls.”)

Now cut out a couple of generous portions for yourself and your significant other, grab yourself a fork, and eat!

Regards Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Moussaka -- Re-cooked

(Without the Moose or the Mouse)

This was the very first recipe posting I made to The Redneck Gourmet back in November of 2004. I have cooked this Greek eggplant standard—Moussaka—a half dozen times since and through experimentation I’ve learned what to do, and by default—what not to do. I believe that I have it figgured out.

I cooked another 9x13 casserole dish full for dinner last night, and it was excellent, if I do say so myself. I will reiterate my opinion that the key to this dish, in addition to good basic ingredients, is that you must get the spice mixture right to make it taste like “Greek” Moussaka.

You don’t want to end up cooking a dish of something that tastes like Italian eggplant lasagna, YOU WANT TO COOK GREEK MOUSSAKA!

So without further fanfare, on to the ingredients:

3 small eggplants
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely sliced
1 cup button mushrooms
3 garlic cloves, diced fine
2 tbsp olive oil
¼ pint sherry

3/4 LB Chopped Lamb
1/2 LB lean ground beef

1 can (8 oz) pureed tomatoes
1 can (8oz) diced tomatoes

½ tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cumin powder
½ tsp red pepper
½ tsp allspice
½ tsp paprika
½ tsp salt

1 cup un-seasoned bread crumbs
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 cup crumbled Feta Cheese

For the Béchamel Sauce Topping:

4 tbsp unsalted butter
4 tbsp flour
1-1/4 cup scalded milk
2 eggs
1/8 tsp red pepper
¼ tsp salt

It looks like a lot of ingredients, doesn’t it?

Well...don’t get all nervous and scared, here is what you need to do—just take it one step at a time:

First, peal and slice the eggplant into 1/8” pieces. Now soak the eggplant in cold salted ice water for at least one hour--Mine soaked for about three, and you can change the water once if you want to.

Redneck Tip: Weight the eggplant slices with a couple of saucers or plates (whatever will fit in your water bowl) to ensure that all of the slices stay submerged under the water.

Peal and cut your carrot into thin slices.

For the meat sauce, in a large deep skillet or sauce pan, heat 2 tbsp olive oil and add the diced onion. Cook your onion until it is clear, then add your garlic and cook, stirring regularly.

Redneck Tip: Don’t burn your garlic or you’ll have to start over.

Add the chopped lamb and ground beef and cook it all until it is browned. Tilt your skillet over and spoon out as much grease as you want. I use a turkey baster for this task.

Next add the tomato puree and diced tomatoes, carrots, and mushrooms, along with the allspice, cinnamon, cumin, paprika, salt and red pepper.

Add the ¼ pint of sherry and enough water or beef stock to thin it out a little (I used about a cup of water this time.)

Redneck Tip: Don’t attempt to do the rest of the ½ pint bottle of Sherry as a shot. You’ll end up burning up your Moussaka and dancing by yourself while watching TV and eating a bag of corn chips for dinner.

Bring your meat sauce to a nice simmer, and cook for 20 minutes or so until it is reduced to a nice consistency. You want it to still be juicy, but not really runny.

Meanwhile, back to that delicious eggplant. Pour off the water through a colander.

Redneck tip: Remove the weights first, duuh…

Turn all of the eggplant pieces up on edge in the colander and separate them as you can so that all of the water drains out. You don’t want soggy eggplant for the next step.

Redneck Tip: Guys, you might want to put on a shirt when you start frying the eggplant, particularly if it is wet, because it will pop a good deal and you risk burning your beer belly if you stand too close to the skillet (Ladies, I assume you were already wearing a shirt.)

Fry the eggplant slices in a skillet in about ¼” of vegetable oil over medium heat until tender. Drain the slices, once they are cooked, on lots of paper towels. Don’t skimp on the paper towels, you want to get as much grease out of the eggplant as is possible.

The Bechamel sauce is made as follows. Pay attention…

Melt the butter in a medium skillet over medium low heat. Now add your flour, a tablespoon at a time, stirring constantly. In another small pot, scald your milk, then turn down the heat and keep warm.

Redneck tip: For all of you Cajuns out there, we’re making a roux.

Keep adding the flour a little bit at a time until the roux is thick, but don’t cook it until it is brown. Add the warm milk a little at a time, again stirring constantly with a whisk. After the milk is added, bring the whole thing to a low boil and cook until it thickens to the consistency of a medium gravy. Turn off the heat and let it cool.

In a separate bowl (or a coffee cup), beat the eggs until smooth. Slowly add a little of the cooled sauce to the eggs so as to not “scramble them.” Add the warmed egg/sauce mixture to the balance of the sauce, add the red pepper, cinnamon, and salt to taste. Turn off heat and continue to stir to blend.

Putting it all together:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Sprinkle a few tablespoons of bread crumbs into the bottom of a greased 9 x 13 Pyrex dish.

Layer one half of the eggplant on the bottom of the dish. Pour half of the meat sauce mixture on top of the eggplant and smooth it out evenly.

Layer the rest of the eggplant slices and sprinkle with another couple of tablespoons of bread crumbs, half of the grated parmesan cheese and all of the Feta cheese. Add the balance of the meat sauce mixture and smooth out evenly. Sprinkle with the rest of the bread crumbs and parmesan cheese.

Pour the Bechamel sauce over the top of the dish and smooth it out nice and evenly.

Be patient...you're on the home stretch now…place your finished dish of Moussaka into the 350 degree oven and cook it for 20 minutes or until golden brown on top.

After it's done like you like, you'll have to wait to allow the Moussaka to cool and rest for 15 minutes, then slice it into squares, and serve with your favorite red wine and bread.

Now grab yourself a fork and napkin, sit down at your dinner table or in the floor at the coffee table in front of the TV and EAT!

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Chili

Yeeeeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaaa

I guess almost everyone has their own favorite recipe for Chili.

I said ALMOST EVERYONE…

If you don’t have your personal favorite recipe (because you don’t cook), then I suspect that at least you know SOMEONE that does have one—a favorite Chili Recipe, that is.

Well, I have a confession…

I haven’t cooked Chili before (gasp…)

Never Ever…

But…

I had some ground beef that I bought on sale at the grocer yesterday, and as a result, Pat suggested that I make Chili for dinner.

So I did.

I pulled some Chili together this afternoon and after about three hours of simmering it came out GREAT, so I decided to do something that I rarely do—I’m writing it up after my first time cooking it.

Here is what you will need to make my Chili:

2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, diced fine
½ tsp red pepper flakes
½ tbsp chili powder
½ tsp cumin
¼ tsp paprika
¼ tsp ground red pepper
¼ tbsp black pepper
¼ tbsp white pepper


1-1/4 pound lean ground beef

(1) 12 oz can beer
(1) 14 oz can beef stock

(1) 28 oz can of Pureed Tomatoes
(1) 28 oz can of Diced Tomatoes
(2) 15 oz cans tomato sauce
(2) 15.5 oz cans dark red kidney beans, drained
(1) 15.5 oz cans Navy beans, drained


Ninety Nine percent of your work is done in the first twenty minutes, so pay attention here to what I say, get your prep work done, get it all cooking together, then grab yourself a beer or a Coke Cola and laze around while your Chili finishes making itself.

Put your olive oil into the bottom of a large, heavy boiler over medium heat. Add your diced onion, and cook it for five minutes or so, stirring occasionally.

Next add your diced garlic and your spices (cumin, chili powder, red pepper flakes, etc.) and keep stirring for another couple of minutes.

Now add your ground beef and break it up so that it cooks well.

When your ground beef is nicely browned, tilt your boiler over and spoon out some of the fat and oil if you want to. You can even pour your beef/onion/garlic mixture through a colander if you want to or, if you love fat like I do, you can just leave it in and keep cooking.

Now turn the heat down a little and add your beer. Watch it foam.

Once the mixture stops foaming up, add the beef stock, the pureed tomatoes, the diced tomatoes, and the tomato sauce.

Stir, stir, stir.

Doesn’t that look yummy?

Just wait until you add your can of navy beans and your two cans of dark red kidney beans.

Still looks yummy?

Taste it, being careful to not burn your tongue or the roof of your mouth.

Does it need anything?

Well, then add it silly…it’s your chili.

Now turn your heat down to medium low, prop a lid on the boiler slightly open, and stop back by every fifteen minutes to give it all a good stir and supervise its progress.

When you a satisfied with your chili (give it at least a couple of hours--or until you can’t wait any longer), grab yourself a bowl, a piece of cornbread, a big old spoon, and sit down at the table and EAT.

Regards Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Baked Ziti

Dinner For Eight


Happy New Year everybody!

It’s your lovely and talented cooking blogger, The Redneck Gourmet, back here on the keyboard with my first recipe of 2006—Baked Ziti.

We had five family guests and our 85 year old neighbor, Mr. Harlan “Bucky” Strader (Dartmouth class of 1942), up here in the Condo last Friday night for dinner, and at Pat’s suggestion I tossed together a simple buffet style meal consisting of some fresh Sundried Tomato Basil bread from our local grocer’s Deli, an organic mixed green salad, and, of course, the baked Ziti.

Don’t be afraid, because Ziti, simply put, is just a big fat tubular shaped pasta noodle, about 2” long and 3/8” in diameter. Baked Ziti, therefore, is almost like baked lasagna (the familiar flat form of pasta.)

Here’s what you will need to make dinner for eight, with leftovers if everyone doesn't eat like a pig:

(2) pounds of dry Ziti noodles
(2) 8 oz containers of Ricotta cheese
(2) 12 oz packages of shredded Mozzarella cheese

For the Sauce:

(4) tbsp good olive oil
½ large onion, diced fine (or as much as you like, it’s your sauce)
(2) cloves of garlic, diced fine

1 tbsp dried Oregano
1 tbsp dried Parsley
1 tbsp dried Thyme
1 tbsp dried Basil (or fresh if you have it)
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
1 tsp black pepper

(1) 14 oz can beef broth
(1) 14 oz can chicken broth
(3) 28 oz cans pureed tomatoes
(2) 7 oz cans tomato paste
(3) 6 oz cans portabella mushroom pieces

½ pound ground pork


Here we go…

Dump the olive oil into the bottom of a large, heavy boiler over medium heat, then toss in your diced onion and let it cook for a couple of five or six minutes before you add your garlic.

Keep cooking for ten minutes or so, being careful not to burn anything.

Now add your spices—Oregano, Parsley, Thyme, and Basil. Stir the mixture up and let the oil and juices activate the flavor in the spices.

Doesn’t that smell good?

Now dump in your can of beef stock and scrape the bottom of the boiler to get all of the bits suspended in your liquid. Add the pureed tomatoes and tomato paste, and reduce your heat to medium low.

Meanwhile, in a medium skillet, brown your ground pork and spoon off any extra fat that cooks out of your meat. (My pork was surprisingly lean, so I just ignored this step.)

Once the pork is browned, add it to your sauce mixture along with half the can of Chicken broth and the Portabella Mushrooms, toss a lid on the boiler, and let everything simmer for a couple of hours.

Watch your temperature and stop by to stir your sauce every fifteen minutes or so. Try not to enjoy the aroma too much…and if things get too thick too fast, add the other half can of chicken broth.

My sauce cooked for almost three hours by the time I was ready to finally put the dish together, then I cooked my Ziti in some lightly salted water according to the package directions (about 10 minutes.)

Drain your Ziti through a colander, then coat two 9”x13” casserole dish with Pam cooking spray or olive oil.

Now comes the fun part, putting it all together…preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Spoon a thin layer of your tomato sauce into the bottom of your casserole dishes, and then spread ½ of your ziti noodles on top. Now divide your Ricotta cheese in half and spread it over the noodles. Sprinkle half of your Mozzarella cheese on top of the Ricotta.

Add another layer of Ziti noodles, another layer of tomato sauce, and top everything off with the rest of the Mozzarella cheese.

Step back from the counter and admire your work.

Doesn’t that look nice?

Mine did…

Pop the dishes into the oven for 30 minutes until it’s all nice and bubbly, then put your plates on the table, grab yourself a fork and EAT.

Regards Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Merry Christmas!

I'd like to say Merry Christmas to all of my regular readers (OK...Both of my regular readers--my Mother and Allison.)

To the rest of you that are just stopping by for the first time or stop by occasionally, I offer the same greeting to you.

I also offer the following advice:

Cook something new today.

Try something different.

Make something unique.

Take a chance...

heck, if you can't use you own family as Guinea Pigs, who can you use?

Seafood Dip

“it doesn’t taste like kitty food”

We’ve attended a wonderful series of holiday parties this past week—some in private homes, and one put on by the owner of our favorite restaurant, “The Blackwater Grill.”

Since we weren’t sponsoring a party ourselves this year here in the old condo, we volunteered to cook up some vittles to augment the spread of food at a party put on by our neighbors Bruce and Ski.

Pat made two variations on her Chicken Salad, and I surprised myself with a cream cheese based seafood dip that exceeded my own pompous expectations.

Here’s what your need to do to make a very good, but somewhat tedious seafood dip:

(3) 8 ounce packages of cream cheese.
½ cup lite mayo
½ pound fresh or frozen shrimp
1 pound snow crab clusters
3 green onions, diced fine
2 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp paprika
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

For the cocktail sauce:

2/3 cup catsup
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
4 tbsp prepared horseradish
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp Tabasco sauce

Redneck Tip: Almost all of the recipes on the internet call for the use of canned shrimp. You can use canned shrimp if you want to—it’s your dip—but you might as well be using cat food in your dip, in my considered Redneck opinion. At least use good frozen shrimp, and fresh shrimp if you can get them, it makes a HUGE DIFFERENCE in the flavor. I’ve tried to eat this stuff at parties over the years and although I LOVE seafood, making a dip with cheep, crappy, canned shrimp makes me GAG.

First things first.

Toss your cream cheese out on the counter to let it warm up to room temperature, then cook your shrimp and crab.

You know, boil some water, toss in some salt and seasoning (red pepper, etc.) and cook for five to eight minutes or so until your shrimp turn pink and the shells on the crabs do likewise.

Pour your water and shellfish through a colander, let everything cool off so that you can handle it, then shell your shrimp and crab legs.

Redneck Tip: I know, I know, I know…it’s hard work, but believe me it is worth the effort. I used this opportunity to clean out our freezer of some larger stronger flavored shrimp that Pat didn’t like in pasta dishes and some crab legs that had developed a bad case of ice crystals inside the plastic storage bag. The results were fabulous...

Dice up your shrimp and crab parts into ¼ inch pieces. Once you have a bowl full of little seafood parts, drizzle your lemon juice over everything and sprinkle with paprika and Worcestershire sauce.

In a mixing bowl, toss in the cream cheese, mayo, and green onions and mash everything up good with a fork or a dough cutter. Next add your seafood parts and keep mixing. Use your fingers if your dare.

When you are satisfied with your mix, dump the whole thing out on a platter or a plate and shape it into a big symmetrical “dome.”

Cover it with saran wrap, then place it in the fridge for a couple of hours (mine sat overnight.)

Whip up the cocktail sauce in a mixing bowl, then pour it over the top of your dip when you are ready to serve it. Surround it with some Captains wafers and other crackers, toss it out in front of your guests, and EAT.

Regards Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Stuffed Cabbage

Talk about somebody being in a rut. That’s where my cooking has been this past month.

Don’t get me wrong here—I’ve been producing a bunch of good food, I’ve just mainly been cooking my standard recipes and haven’t felt that I had anything really interesting to write about.

Fortunately for me and the Blog, I’ve got a couple of new things worked up now and the first one I want to introduce is last evening’s dinner entrée—Stuffed Cabbage.

My girl Pat grew up cooking and eating Stuffed Cabbage while I only used cabbage for coleslaw, but we still spent some time looking around on the internet and we ended up making a few modifications and combining some ideas we found. I might have a little fine tuning to do on the quantities, but I feel the necessity to get something published here on the blog so here goes…To make our Stuffed Cabbage, you’ll need the following ingredients:

Two medium heads of cabbage

For the sweet and sour tomato sauce:

2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic—smashed and minced
2 28 oz cans whole peeled tomatoes
6 8 oz cans unseasoned tomato sauce
2 tbsp white vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp dried parsley
Salt to taste
Black pepper to taste

For the meat filling:

2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic—smashed and minced
½ yellow onion--diced
1-1/2 lbs ground beef
½ pound ground pork
1-1/2 cups instant rice
1 tbsp dried parsley
1 can tomato paste
2 tbsp red wine

First you make a sweet & sour tomato sauce. Add the olive oil to a large boiler over medium heat. Add your garlic and sautee for a few minutes, being careful not to burn it. Meanwhile, dump your whole tomatoes into a mixing bowl and break them up with your fingers or a fork.

Add the mashed up tomatoes and the tomato sauce to the garlic in the boiler and turn the heat down a little. Now add the vinegar, the sugar, the parsley, and a little salt and pepper and let it simmer for at least 30 minutes (my sauce cooked a couple of hours.)

Place your ground beef and pork in a large mixing bowl, add your instant rice, and stir everything together well.

In a large skillet, sautee your diced onion in a couple of teaspoons of olive oil. After a few minutes, add the minced garlic. Once the onions and garlic have cooked (5 minutes or so), add the tomato paste, splash in the red wine, and the parsley. Turn off the heat.

When you’re happy with your sauces, peel the crappy outside leaves off your cabbage and discard them. Put the cabbages in a couple of large boilers and cover each head with water. Bring them to a low boil. Once the water boils, turn off the heat and let your cabbage coast for a few minutes, then dump out the hot water and add cold water to stop them from cooking.

Once they have cooled off so that you can handle them, carefully peal the leaves off each head and make a nice pile of leaves ready for stuffing.

Now add the contents of the skillet (onions, garlic, tomato paste, etc.) to the meat in the mixing bowl. Mix well with a spoon or your hands.

Spray two 9x13 Pyrex dishes with non-stick spray. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Now the fun part. Take a knife and slice the big rib out of the middle of each cabbage leaf, then spoon two or three (or four) spoonfuls of the meat mixture into the leaf and roll it up real tight. Place your stuffed cabbage leaves in uniform rows in the dishes. Use your good judgment as to the number of leaves and the quantity of meat to put in each leaf.

Once you have a couple of dishes full of stuffed leaves, pour your tomato sauce over the top of everything and smooth it out with your spoon. Cover each dish with aluminum foil and pop them in the oven for about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Start checking how done things are after about an hour in the oven. Then pull your cabbages out, let them cool a little, grab yourself a fork, and EAT.

Regards Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Soft Taco Photos

Here is what they should look like...

Mexican Soft Tacos—Chicken or Fish

With Black Beans and Corn


A new Mexican restaurant opened here on the island this summer. The local residents were excited because previously there had been only one Mexican establishment on the entire island and its reputation was less than stellar.

Its arrival made me quite happy, because I missed eating Mexican food once a week like I did when I lived in Atlanta. There must be a law or a rule or something that requires that there be a Mexican restaurant located every ½ mile along the roads in Atlanta. Imagine that?

The new local restaurant is excellent, and their cooks do some interesting twists on what had become, for me, somewhat mundane standard Mexican cuisine. They make a dozen different varieties of “soft tacos.” None of those hard fried corn taco shells that crumble in your hands and dump their contents in your lap when you bite into them, the soft taco uses a warm flour tortilla to contain the meat and vegetable contents

I’ve done some research on the internet and discovered some additional ideas, and combining those ideas with what I learned at the restaurant, here are my own two versions of Mexican Soft Tacos that I made this week.

You’ll need the following ingredients to make dinner for two. It looks like a lot of work, but they’re really very easy:

Chicken Soft Tacos:

One or two boneless chicken breasts
½ lime
2 large flour tortillas

Fish Soft Tacos:

Two or three small Tilapia filets (or other mild white fish of your choice)
½ lime
1/3 cup flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 egg
1 can of beer, room temperature
1 tbsp taco seasoning (see below)
oil for frying (I use peanut oil)
2 large flour tortillas

For the toppings:

1 cup red cabbage, shredded fine
11 oz can mandarin orange segments (pour off the juice)
jalapeno peppers (as many as you can stand—be careful)
1 sliced avocado
1 lime for squeezing

Salsa sauce:

2 medium tomatoes
2 or 3 small hot or mild peppers
¼ red or yellow onion
½ lime
splash of vinegar


For the Taco Seasoning:

1 tablespoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Black Bean and Corn Mix:

15 oz can black beans
8-1/4 oz can whole yellow corn
1/4 cup of water
a splash of chicken stock or ¼ tsp of chicken bullion powder
½ tsp taco seasoning

First things first. Mix all of your taco seasoning ingredients together in a small mixing bowl. You can also use prepackaged taco seasoning if you want to, but I prefer to make my own because I can control the flavor.

Place the tomatoes, the peppers, the onion, and the ½ lime in the oven on broil. Cook everything until the skins start to blacken lightly, then remove from the oven and set aside to cool.

Once cooled, place the tomatoes, peppers, and onion into the blender or food processor, squeeze in the lime juice and add the vinegar, then pulse to chop the mixture up as finely as you would like.

Whether you’re using chicken, fish, or both; rinse the meat off, pat dry, and place it in a shallow bowl. Squeeze the lime juice over the meat and turn to coat, sprinkle with taco seasoning, cover and set in the refrigerator for at least a half hour.

If you’re making fish tacos, go ahead and open the beer, drink two thirds to three quarters of it, then let it set and warm up a little.

Redneck Tip: You can also use warm flat beer left over from last night if you want to.

Now whisk together the flour, baking powder, egg, a few splashes of warm beer, and 1 tbsp of taco seasoning in a medium mixing bowl. What you’re doing is making a batter that needs to be thick enough to stick to the fish, so if you get it too thin like I did the first time, just add a little flour to thicken things up. When you are satisfied with your batter's consistency, cover it up and place it in the fridge for a half hour.

While the chicken/fish is marinating and the flour is resting in the refrigerator, dump the black beans and corn into a small skillet and add the water, chicken stock, and taco seasoning. Turn the heat on a very low setting and let the mixture cook to reduce while you finish your tacos.

Toss a large skillet on the stovetop on medium heat and add enough oil to fill ½ inch deep. If you are cooking chicken, you’ll need a separate skillet to cook the chicken in. Put a splash of oil in it also and set the heat on medium low.

Sprinkle your tortillas lightly with water, wrap them in aluminum foil, and place them along with your plates in the oven to warm.

Now you are ready to cook.

The chicken is easy—toss it in the skillet on medium low and cook for a couple of minutes on each side. Now pull it out onto a cutting board, slice thinly, sprinkle with more taco seasoning, and place back in the skillet to finish cooking. I like my chicken well done, but not tough, so go easy on the heat here.

The fish is a little more work. Pull your fish and batter out of the fridge, dredge the fillets through the batter, then fry each piece in the grease for three to five minutes on each side (the time depends on thickness.) When they’re done, place them on the side on paper towels to drain.

You're on the home stretch now--pull your tortillas out of the oven, place your plates on your chargers, and lay a tortilla in the middle of each plate. Put a piece of chicken or fish on the tortilla and fold the tortilla across the meat. Now spoon out some of your black bean and corn mixture onto the plate, place your condiments (shreaded cabbage, sliced avacados, orange segments, salsa, and sour cream) and plates on the table, grab yourself a fork, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Dinner

More Cooking Reruns...

I'm still busy re-cooking and photographing my recipes for the cookbook. Here is the result of my efforts last night:

Stuffed bell peppers, ready to pop in the oven.

The recipe was posted here when I first cooked them in June. Try them, they're easy.

Huevos Rancheros!

Weekend Brunch...




Check my November 2004 archives for the details.

I Almost Forgot...

The Redneck Gourmet Turns One Year Old

My humble cooking blog will be celebrating one year on November 9th.

I guess that I'll have to come up with something special to cook, and I might re-run a recipe or two to highlight them to those too busy to read my archives.

Stay tuned, folks...

Cooking Re-Runs

Sorry folks, but the new recipes have been few and far between this past month.

I've basically been doing two things--re-cooking stuff that I've already published to check the ingredients and step-by-step instructions; and doing a lot of baking.

Bread baking.

Last week I made a crusty walnut/raisin whole wheat bread and a couple of loaves of french bread. I also baked the chewey double chocolate chip cookies again.

I made a pretty unspectacular chicken and rice soup for dinner last night that featured home made stock from a whole chicken and Mediterranian spices like Ginger along with lemon juice. It was sorta funky tasting, to say the least.

I think that it needs more work before publishing.

So any way, please bear with me and I promise to have something new written up in the next week or so.

Regards Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Spicy Banana Nut Bread

Got Bananas?

Twice in the past year I’ve been given free bananas. Once I received bananas that were left over after a weekend race for charity. I must have had a dozen and one-half bananas sitting on my countertop turning black ripening. I couldn’t possibly eat that many bananas and I didn’t want to throw them away, so I decided to figure out how to make banana bread. And I did, I just didn’t publish the recipe at that time.

On Sunday my 84 year old neighbor “Bucky” told me that someone had given him a big bunch of bananas and asked me to take some. I immediately thought of making banana bread, so I took home some really ripe bananas.

Here is what you need to make one 5” x 9” loaf:

3 medium bananas, pealed and mashed

1 cup of whole wheat flour
1 cup of plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp cinnamon

½ cup plain sugar
½cup (1 stick) butter-cut into 1/8” slices

2 eggs—lightly beaten

½ cup walnuts-diced
½ cup currants (small raisins)
½ cup dried apricots, diced
2 tbsp brandy

First toss your butter out on the counter and let it warm up to room temperature. Turn on your oven and preheat it to 350 degrees. Grease the sides and bottom of your 9” x 5” loaf pan with butter.

While your butter is warming, mix together the whole wheat flour, the plain flour, the baking powder, baking soda, the salt, and the spices in a medium mixing bowl.

Peal your bananas in a small bowl and mash them up real good with a fork.

Put your walnuts, currants, and diced apricots in a small bowl and drizzle the brandy over them.

Redneck Tip: You can skip this step if you don't have any brandy, but it adds a subtle flavor to the finished bread that I like. Heck, if you like brandy, use a little more if you want.

Once your butter has warmed up, put your sugar in a separate mixing bowl, and add the butter slices. Now cream your butter and sugar together with an electric mixer.

Now add your eggs and whip with the mixer until fluffy, then start adding small quantities of the flour mixture and the mashed bananas as you keep mixing with the electric mixer.

When everything is nice and smooth, dump in your walnut/currant/apricot mixture and mix a little more, but don’t over do it—you just want to evenly mix everything.

Pour your batter into your loaf pan and spread it out evenly with a spatula. Pop it in the oven and cook until golden brown, about 60 minutes in my oven.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

PiZZa—Phase II

As I wrote back in April when I first tried to cook it: I love good pizza.

Not just any pizza, I want good pizza.

I’ve cooked pizza at least once a month since then, and I’ve finally gotten the crust making process down to an art. Having modified the quantity of ingredients and understanding the method a little better, I feel like it is worth writing about it again to bring the recipe to the attention of my new readers.

If you have never had what I consider to be good pizza, you are missing a real culinary treat. This means that if you eat pizza you are probably happy having Pizza Hut, Dominoes, or Pappa John’s deliver some mishy-mash of cheese stuffed crust with cinnamon sticks and a large bottle of flat soda to your door for $13.98 (such a deal) with a coupon. Every time I try this approach, I swear to myself that I’ll never do it again.

Making home made pizza dough is not something that you can do in thirty minutes after you get home from work and the kids are screaming, but you can do it on a Saturday afternoon when you have the time to let the dough rise.

I said LET THE DOUGH RISE. The first time I made the recipe I was hard headed and rushed the process, didn’t let the dough rise fully, and used all of the dough to make one really fat, 2” thick crust 14” pizza. The dough tasted fine, but it was way too much crust for a single pizza.

This afternoon I again took my time, let the dough rise properly, and made one nice thick crust 13” pizza. Mama Mia…It Worked—I can hardly believe that I made this pizza myself.

Here is what I did:

For the Dough Starter—

¾ cup plain flour (not self rising)
¼ cup warm water
1 pack of fast acting yeast


For the main dough—

1-1/2 cups plain flour
3/4 cup room temperature water
1 tsp salt

For the Tomato Sauce—

(1) 8 oz can Hunts No Salt Tomato Sauce
(1) 6 oz can tomato paste
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried parsley
A couple twists of fresh ground black pepper


Toppings—Take your pick, you know what you like…I used

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Sliced pepperoni
Spicy Italian Sausage
Sliced black olives
Sliced mushrooms
Marinated artichoke hearts, sliced
Sun dried tomatoes
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Crumbled Feta cheese


Making the dough is a two part process.

First you make the starter by combining the warm water and the yeast in a small glass measuring cup. Stir the mixture up and let it set for ten minutes. This activates the little yeast beasties and gives them a chance to stretch their legs and get ready to do some work for you.

Once you have a ¼ cup of hungry yeast, howling for something to eat, pour your water yeast mixture into a small mixing bowl containing ¾ cup of flour. Take a wooden spoon and stir everything up until the dough starts to pull away from the walls of the bowl.

Knead the dough a little with your fingers, shape into a ball, and then put your dough ball on a plate and cover it with a clean dishtowel. Now let it rise for thirty to forty-five minutes. Fix yourself a drink and get the rest of your ingredients ready. Watch a little TV if you want to.

When you starter has risen, add 3/4 cup of water into your starter and stir it all up to dilute. In a large mixing bowl combine the 1-1/2 cups of flour and the 1 tsp salt and mix thoroughly. Now slowly add your starter/water mixture to your flour/salt mixture and mix it all together with a wooden spoon or, if you’re brave like me, with your bare hands.

Redneck Tip: Wash your hands, then dry them and pour a teaspoon of olive oil into one hand and oil your hands before working with the flour. This will cause the dough to not stick as badly.

Keep working your dough until it starts pulling away from the sides of the bowl. Lightly dust the clean countertop or a large cutting board with flour, then turn out your blob of dough and knead it lightly. I mean LIGHTLY. I’m not going to try to tell you exactly how to knead dough here, it’s not rocket science, but it is important to work your dough to mix the ingredients but not over work it—else it will be TOUGH. As I’ve said earlier, practice makes perfect.

Now put your dough ball on a cookie sheet, cover it with a clean dishtowel, and allow it to rise from 1-1/2 to 2 hours. The dough should double in size, so you can adjust your “rise” time based on what your eyeballs tell you.

While you are waiting, make your sauce by combining the tomato sauce, tomato paste, and spices in a small boiler over low heat. Heat until you want to use some, but don’t let it boil.

When you are close to having the dough ready, kick the heat on your oven up to 500 degrees F.

When your dough has adequately risen, uncover it, move it to the side, and re-flour your work surface. Now place your dough in the center of the work area and fold the dough back onto itself from four directions, trying to maintain a round shape. Now kneed the dough gently and work it out with your hands (or use a rolling pin) into a 13” or 14” round shape, maintaining a thicker rim and a thin middle section.

I actually picked my crust up and worked it with my knuckles in the air like the pizza guys do on TV. If you tear a little hole in it, just place it back on the work surface and pinch the hole closed. When you are happy with your crust or afraid to mess with it further, place it on your pizza pan or pizza stone.

Now this step is important. Drizzle a little olive oil over the center of the crust, omitting the outside edges if you want them crispy. Smear the oil around with a spoon or your fingers to evenly coat the crust. This oil is important in order to keep the tomato sauce and other juices from soaking into your crust while your pizza cooks in the oven.

Now smear the tomato sauce over the center of your crust. Use a large wooden spoon to evenly spread the sauce over the area—not too thick. I like to cook my pizza with a thin coating of sauce and place extra sauce on the side on the table.

Sprinkle a thick layer of Mozzarella cheese over the sauce, add your other ingredients, and another layer of cheese if you want. It's your pizza--be creative.

Here is something else that I've started doing that helps thicken the crust. Let your finished pizza sit on the counter for fifteen minutes or so before you put it in the oven to cook. The yeast in the dough will continue to make the crust rise and you'll get a nice, light, fluffy crust interior with a crisp exterior as a reward for your patience. I really like the consistency that results.

Now you are on the downhill stretch. Toss your pizza in the oven, pour yourself a glass of wine, and do a few dishes while your pizza cooks. My oven takes about 20 minutes at 500 degrees.

Pay attention to your crust after about 18 minutes of cooking--don't burn your masterpiece.

Pull the pizza out and place on a cutting board, place your extra sauce in a bowl on the table, slice your pizza, toss it on plates, top off the wine glasses, and EAT!

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Chewy Double Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal Cookies--UPDATED!

(More than a mouthful)

I first wrote about these cookies back in November last year right after I started writing The Redneck Gourmet. This is my own original recipe that I've developed in an attempt to duplicate some cookies that I used to buy at Harry's Farmer's Market in Atlanta back in the late 1980's.

I have cooked several batches since I first published the recipe and I have slightly refined the ingredient list and the process, so I thought it would be worthwhile to write about them again after cooking my latest batch last night.

I'm not just saying this because I cook them, but believe me--these are some of the best darn cookies you will ever put in your mouth. YOU NEED TO TRY COOKING THEM.

Here is what I use to make my cookies:

2 sticks butter + 1/4 stick

2 eggs
1 cup white crystal sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup Quaker oats

1-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup walnut pieces

1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1-1/2 cups cake flour, sifted
1/2 cup whole wheat flour

3 squares unsweetened baker’s chocolate

According to my Betty Crocker Cookbook, there are a couple of details that ensure good cookies. I followed Mrs. Crocker’s instructions and my cookies came out perfect.

Betty Crocker Tip: First, let your butter soften at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes before you use it. Second, if you don’t have flat cookie sheets (I don't,) turn your sheets upside down and cook your cookies on the back of the sheet.

Now, as to making great cookies, in a double boiler, combine ¼ stick of butter and three squares of unsweetened baking chocolate and heat over medium heat to melt, stirring occasionally.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the white crystal sugar, the brown sugar, the oats, and the cinnamon. Mix everything together with your hands to combine very well. Slice your softened butter into 1/8" thick pieces and slowly add it to the sugar/oats mixture as you beat it with an electric mixer on low speed.

Do not over beat, just break up and distribute the butter evenly. Now add the eggs and vanilla and beat some more.

Sprinkle in your chocolate chips and walnuts and beat lightly with the mixer. Be careful to not break up your chocolate chips.

Finally, once the chocolate and butter mixture has melted, add it to the sugar/oats mixture and beat lightly.

In a separate medium mixing bowl, sift and measure the cake flour, the whole wheat flour, the salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Mix everything together with a spoon.

Now it is time to think—you might not need all of your flour mixture--so pay close attention. Add half of your flour mix to the wet mix and beat it all together with the mixer. Take a spatula and scrape the sides of the bowl to get the dry stuff off of the edges. Keep adding the flour mixture a little at a time and beating it with the mixer until you have a very stiff dough.

As I said, you might not need all of the flour, depending on room temperature and your accuracy of measuring the ingredients.

I said VERY stiff dough...it's important.

When you are satisfied with your dough, cover the mixture with Saran Wrap and sit it in the refrigerator for ten or fifteen minutes to chill. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Open a beer or mix yourself a drink while you wait.

Redneck Tip: My Betty Crocker Cookbook had another idea I liked. Instead of cooking a whole batch of bad cookies, spoon out a little ball of your dough on to a cookie sheet and test-cook one cookie to see what you’ve got. If your cookie spreads out too much and is flat, add a little flour to your mix. If it is too dry and cooks like a golf ball, add a little more butter, a dash of milk, or another egg and try again. Mine worked great the first try. Also, allow your cookie sheets to cool off between batches so that your cookies don’t spread too much while cooking—remember, that’s why we chilled the dough in the first place…

Spoon out even globs of your cookie dough onto your cookie sheets. I wanted real thick, 4” cookies, so I used big portions. I left the dough in even globs--almost "balls" of dough standing up 1-1/2" to 2" high. Trust me here. The dough will spread out as it cooks, but the cookies will still be almost 1/2" thick when you're done.

For large cookies, cook them for fifteen to seventeen minutes, until you see the sides of the bottoms starting to get real dark.

Allow the cookies to cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes, then slide them off onto a cooling rack. Repeat the cooking process until you run out of dough, or make some more dough and keep going.

I made about a dozen and one-half 4" diameter, super fat cookies, and between the real estate agents and other victims I ran into today, I only have four left.

I had ZERO complaints.

YOU BETTER TRY MAKING THESE COOKIES, DARN IT...


Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Kahlua

I enjoy a good coffee drink. The only problem is that liquors like Kahlua and Amaretto cost a pretty penny. Try buying a couple of Irish Coffees or other "adult" coffee drinks in a bar or restaurant and you'll find yourself having to take out a loan to pay the tab.

Years ago I had some German friends in Atlanta that made their own kahlua. It was good rendition of the store bought stuff, and I always wanted to try to figgure out how to do it myself.

I did a little research and found a number of recipes for making Kahlua on the Internet, so I’ve started making it and adding a little “kick” of my own. Instead of 40 proof (20% alcohol), I expect mine comes out somewhere between 80 and 100 proof.

You’ll need the following ingredients:

2 cups water
6 tbsp coffee
¼ tsp cinnamon

2 cups water
1-1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp vanilla extract
1 dash of red pepper
1 dash of nutmeg

3 cups golden grain alcohol

Now roll up your sleeves and let’s get to work.

First make yourself a small pot of extra strong coffee. Let it cool off well.

Meanwhile, in a medium boiler heat the water, sugar, and spices until boiling, then turn off the heat and let the mixture cool completely.

Once everything has cooled, add the coffee to the water/sugar/spice mixture, then add your grain alcohol.

BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN HANDLING GRAIN ALCOHOL, unless you want your friends and family to see you on the evening news.

Let your mixture sit overnight, then bottle it in an old wine bottle or a new decorative bottle.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Funky Mandarin Stir-Fry

From my fridge/pantry to the table in less than an hour…

I’ve done enough stir fry over the past couple of years to be comfortable making up my own variations on the theme. For those of you that haven’t tried it, stir fry is basically a bunch of stuff tossed in a medium hot skillet (or wok) and cooked until it is as done as you like, then seasoned with Soy sauce and thickened with a mixture of water and corn starch.

It’s just that easy, and it’s hard to come up with something that doesn’t taste edible as long as you keep your old dirty sneakers and your pets out of the mixture.

Tonight I did a little fridge and pantry shopping and I tossed everything that looked like it would be good in a stir fry out on the counter.

When I was done with my "in house" shopping trip, here is what I had to work with:

½ pound boneless skinless chicken thighs
2 tbsp soy sauce

¼ head of green cabbage, shredded
½ yellow bell pepper, julienned
½ red bell pepper, Julianned
1 medium carrot, Julianned
1” piece of fresh ginger, diced fine
2 cloves garlic, diced fine
(1) 11 oz can mandarin orange segments
1/2 can bamboo shoots
(1) 14 oz can baby corn, drained and cut in half
2/3 cup frozen English peas (or snow peas or whatever you got)

2 tbsp peanut oil
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
¼ orange juice
A couple of dashes of red pepper (to YOUR taste—be careful)

¼ cup warm water
1 tbsp corn starch

1-1/2 cup white rice, cooked

First cut up your chicken into one or two bite pieces, place the pieces in a zip lock baggie, and add a couple tablespoons worth of soy sauce. Work everything around with your hands and let the chicken marinade in the baggie for a half hour or so.

While your chicken is marinating, dice up your veggies and heat up your skillet a little.

You can also put your rice on to cook when you start cooking your chicken. Don’t forget your rice like I always try to do.

Now pour the peanut oil in the skillet, let it heat up good, and stir fry the chicken until it is done medium well. Add the diced garlic when the chicken is half done. Don’t burn your garlic unless you want "truely funky stir fry."

Turn down the heat slightly and reserve the chicken on the side while you stir fry your veggies.

Toss in the cabbage and pour in the orange juice and a table spoon of Soy sauce. Stir the cabbage as it sizzles away. After a couple of minutes, add your bell peppers, peas, and carrots. Keep stirring. Now add the fish sauce and the toasted sesame sauce, along with the baby corn and the bamboo shoots.

Keep stirring for a few more minutes. Check your rice and open your can of mandarin orange segments. Keep stirring—why do you think that they call it stir fry anyway?

Now add your chicken back into the mixture, along with the mandarin orange segments, and stir everything together good. Take a taste of the veggies to check your seasoning.

Does it need anything? Well add it then, it’s your dinner.

Stir up the corn starch with the warm water real good, then pour half into the mixture and stir it up. Now add the rest of the water/corn starch mixture and let everything simmer as it thickens up.

Place a couple of big bowls on chargers, spoon in half your rice into each bowl, top the rice with your stir fry mixture, grab yourself a fork or better yet, some chop sticks, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Rib Re-runs

Well, I did them again after letting them spend two days in a spicy brine.

Remember my Baby Back Pork Ribs that I cooked a couple of times earlier this summer?

Unfortunately my health continues to limit my kitchen endeavors, but I did manage to find the ribs on sale this past week and while one rack is comfortably resting frozen in the freezer, the second rack made dinner Sunday night.

I'm quite serious when I say that you should experiment with the brining mixture. This time I just winged it--1 and 1/2 gallon cold water, 1 cup white vinegar, 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup salt, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 tbsp black peppercorns, and ...... the piece de resistance...

1 tbsp red pepper flakes.

Man, was this mixture ever spicy--particularly after two days of soaking.

I've made these little rib racks thingies out of wire coathangers that work well keeping the ribs standing on edge over a pan of water while they cooked indirectly on my charcoal grill. I'll post a drawing and some pictures later so you can make your own.

I appreciate you continuing to bear with me as I recover from my malady.

Regards Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

General Tsao's Chicken

I'm Baaaaccckkk…

Yes ladies and gentlemen, I’ve somewhat recovered from the disastrous month of August and my bout with intestinal ischemia—blood clots in my abdomen. I was lucky that I threw in the towel when I did and allowed my mother to take me in for medical treatment or they say that I’d be upstairs cooking with Justin Wilson and Julia Child right now. Thank God we live in 2005 rather than 1905 or my prognosis would have been quite different. Fortunately, I’m a number of pounds lighter, but hardly worse for the wear and ready to get back in the kitchen.

My appetite has been slowly returning and I actually cooked dinner the past couple of days—nothing fancy, just some frozen veggies and a pre-roasted grocery store chicken breast. I think that it’s time for something spicy to test out the old gastrointestinal tract.

Tonight I fired up the stovetop and on the menu was General Tsao’s Chicken. I guess almost everyone has had some variation of this dish if you have ever had carry out Chinese in a large city, but I did a little research and found this entertaining Washington Post article telling us a little more about the dish’s namesake.

Yes, there really was a guy named General Tsao (generally pronounced “Sow”.) He was actually named Tsao Tsungtang and he lived in China between 1812 and 1885. How the spicy chicken dish actually came to be named for the good General is a matter of wide speculation, but I found it interesting to read the article as I made my recipe preparations.

Authentic recipes used in the restaurants use dark meat chicken, but I also found recipes that called for using chicken breast meat. I compromised and used some Perdue boneless chicken thighs that I found very reasonably priced and had never used before.

For my version of “General Tsao’s Chicken, you will need:

1-1/2 pounds Chicken (boneless chicken breast halves, thighs, or whatever)
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup chopped green onions
1 tsp red pepper flakes (or as many as you like, be careful)


For the Sauce:

1/4 cup cornstarch
1/3 cup water
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger root
3/8 cup white sugar
1/8 cup soy sauce
1/8 cup rice wine vinegar
`/8 cup white wine or sake
1/4 cup hot chicken broth

Make the sauce first. Combine the cornstarch and water in a mixing bowl and stir together. Now add the sugar, soy sauce, white wine vinegar, white wine, and the chicken broth. Stir it all up, and refrigerate—over night if you want.

When you are ready to cook, preheat a skillet to 350 degrees.

Cut up your chicken meat into bite sized pieces (two bites at a maximum) and place it in a medium mixing bowl. Add the soy sauce and white pepper, and then stir in the beaten egg. Add the cornstarch and toss the chicken pieces to coat, and then stir in the vegetable oil to separate the pieces

Add the chicken in small batches to the skillet and stir fry until crispy. Drain the cooked chicken on the side on paper towels.

Did I mention making some rice? Well, make yourself some rice if you want—it’s your dinner.

Puttin’ it all together…Add a tablespoon of oil to the skillet and allow it to come up to temperature, then add the pepper flakes and green onions and stir fry briefly. Remove the sauce from the fridge, stir it up, and add it to the skillet along with the chicken pieces and cook until the sauce thickens and everything has heated though.

Get out a couple of bowls, spoon in some rice, and serve the General’s chicken and sauce on top. Teach yourself to use chopsticks while you’re at it—I’m still training Pat.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Hospital Food

Sorry for my absence--it wasn't by choice...

I'm happy to report that I survived 9 days in intensive care and 6 days in a regular hospital room, and a clear liquid diet is even less attractive today than it was before I landed in the emergency room on August 17th.

The medical diagnosis was that I had a series of blood clots develop in the veins between my intestines, liver, and kidneys. Without boring you with the details, I have fought hyper-coagulativity problems for the past 21 years with the only previous symptoms developing in my legs.

Not any more, however.

I will live the rest of my life, such is it is, taking the blood thinner Coumadin. So much for eating a bunch of collard greens or other leafy green vegetables containing vitamin K that affects blood clotting factors.

The good news was that the stove got fixed before I was admitted into the hospital, Hurricane Katrina missed our South Alabama farm by about four counties, and I hope to be back home on St. Simons this weekend. My appetite is returning and I'm looking forward to grilling some pork or chicken over the Labor Day holiday. I'll try to have something new to post as a result of my efforts.

Hope everyone has a good holiday weekend. Pray for the storm victims--they need all the help they can get.

Regards Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Campfire Cooking—Part Deaux

Kosher salt baked potatoes

Our epic saga continues. It’s day six of the broken stove chronicles—but the good news is that service guy just got here as I started writing.

Even if he fixes the stove, I already have made preparations to grill burgers, Portobello mushrooms, and corn on the cob for tonight’s dinner.

I did baked potatoes on the grill again last night in a cast iron skillet, without covering them with aluminum foil. That’s right, no foil, in a skillet.

What you do is pour a thin layer of kosher salt in the bottom of the skillet, place your potatoes in the skillet, and dump the rest of the box of kosher salt on top of and around the potatoes. Cover them up entirely, with a top ¼” thick layer of salt.

Now toss your potatoes on the grill for about an hour while you cook the rest of your dinner.

Pull the skillet off of the grill and let things cool down for a minute or two, then poke around in the salt with a fork and you’ll find your potatoes clumped together, encased in a crusty shell of salt.

Break open the shell, dust off the potatoes, put them on your plate, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Grilled Snow Crab Legs

Sunday afternoon was fairly mild here on the island. The flys and other bugs gave us a break at the pool and the weather was only moderately threatening on and off. The only ominous thing I was facing was--dinner was to be cooked outside, AGAIN, with...

CHARCOAL.

Coincidentally, in wandering through the grocery store yesterday I was swept up into a fit of buying--they had whole pork tenderloins and snow crab clusters for LESS THAN HALF PRICE.

The fridge and freezer is full as we speak.

Tonight I wanted to eat Snow Crab clusters, but I had to do them on the grill. So I did...I have always had lobster and crab steamed or boiled, but never grilled. I can personally testify that I will probably never boil crab legs ever again. You need to try it for yourself.

To make dinner for two on the grill, you'll need:

Eight or ten frozen snow crab clusters (or Dungeness or Alaskan King crab)
1 stick of butter
1 or 2 lemons

First toss your frozen crab in a large boiler and cover with water to thaw. Change the water once to reduce the smell and improve the flavor. Let everything soak for three or four hours if you want to.

Now fire up the grill.

Put the butter in a small boiler and melt it on the stove (or the grill if your stove is broken like mine...) Scoop off the solids that float to the top. Now you have "drawn butter."

Remove your crab clusters from the water and let drain on a cookie sheet. After they have drained, brush both sides of each cluster with oilve oil.

Place the clusters on the grill for three or four minutes on each side, then pull them off the grill onto a platter with the sliced lemon wedges, get yourself a plate and a roll of paper towels each, sit down at the table, and EAT.

Regards Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Campfire Cooking

Well, if finally broke completely...

Our stove, that is.

It's been acting strange since New Years and has functioned intermittantly, causing us to start turning the circuit breaker off when it was not in use.

This past Wednesday morning it wouldn't turn on at all, as I found out when I tried to heat water to make Green Tea.

I opened up the control panel back in January and couldn't find anything, and when I put it back together it worked perfectly for a few weeks. We've been trying to not hassle the condo owner, but I put a note in the with rent check and I hope to hear from him this weekend (he lives in Pennsylvania.)

Meanwhile I've been doing what little cooking I've done on the grill for dinner in the evenings.

Please stay tuned for more recipes once whe get the stove fixed or replaced.

Sorry Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Breakfast Casserole

Well folks, we’re entertaining relatives again this week, and I, your lovely and talented cooking blogger and chef, am providing lots of food to serve to everyone for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We’re eating out some, but I have an elaborate menu planned for the next five days and my fridge and pantry is bursting at the seams with ingredients.

Today, while Pat and our two guests were baking their brains out at the pool in the 95 degree weather with 110 degree heat index, I was hiding in the kitchen making slaw and potato salad and prepping ribs for the grill for dinner.

The bad news is that I managed to stop up the drain in the kitchen sink for the third time in the past 15 months, this time with left over veggie parts I put down the food disposal. Why have a disposal if you can’t put anything solid down it, you know?

Anyone know a good plumber?

Any way…I have rarely posted any breakfast recipes in the past, other than last November’s Oven Puff Pancake writing, but tonight I have a simple little ditty based on this recipe. It is easy to put together in advance and let set overnight in the fridge before you pop it in the oven in the morning.

Here is what you need to do to make breakfast for four, with a little left over for kids or seconds:

1 pound of spicy hot sausage
½ red bell pepper, diced
½ medium onion, diced
½ stick of semi-sweet, unsalted butter
5 pieces of bread (your choice, I used “five grain” with the crust)
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
7 eggs
2 cups half and half
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt

Here is the process to put it all together:

Melt your butter in a 9”x9” casserole dish (sprayed well with non-stick cooking spray) in the oven or on the stovetop.

Toss a large, heavy skillet on the stove over medium low heat. Put your sausage in the skillet and start cooking it toward brown.

Dice your onion and bell pepper and add it to the skillet and keep cooking until the sausage is brown and the onion and bell pepper are well done.

Turn off the heat, tilt the skillet over on the edge of the eye to drain off the grease, and let the mixture cool off.

When the butter has melted, tear up your pieces of bread into dime sized pieces and put them in the casserole dish on top of the butter. Make an even layer of bread chunks.

Meanwhile, while your sausage is cooling, stir up your eggs and half and half in a small mixing bowl, and add your salt and pepper.

Sprinkle a layer of your shredded cheese over the layer of bread.

After the sausage has cooled and drained a little, spoon it out in a layer on top of the cheese, then pour your eggs evenly on top of everything.

Guess what?

You're done, except letting the dish sit at least a few hours or preferably overnight in the fridge, then cooking it until done in a 350 degree oven, about 45 minutes at my house.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Welcome Carnival of Recipe Readers

Welcome ladies and gentlemen!

Come on inside and sit a spell, take your shoes off, and look around a little...

Maybe try out some of my BBQ recipes, if you will.

Thanks to Dave over at The Glittering Eye for his efforts in puttin' everything together this week.

If you have the time, stop by my political/current event blog What I'd Liked To Have Said, and see what I have to say about what's going on in the real world--such as it is.

Tropical Shrimp Stir Fry

Another day in paradise…another dinner to be cooked, and again--I refuse to eat CHICKEN.

We had a couple of pounds of shrimp in the freezer, so I thawed out a few and started thinking about what I wanted to cook…something a little new and different…

I found my inspiration in this recipe. It's not really a true "sweet & sour" style flavor, but more of a mildly sweet shrimp dish with the pineapple juice and the soy sauce comes through a little also. You can "kick it up a notch" by tossing in more red pepper flakes if you like a little more heat--Emeril style, you know?

The original write up was for 12 SERVINGS!! You know me, I only wanted to make dinner for two, so here is what you will need to do what I did tonight:


½ pound Peeled and De-veined Shrimp


For the Shrimp marinade:

juice from ½ large lemon (no seeds please)
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 tbsp rice wine vinegar


For the rest of the Stir Fry:

2 Tbsp vegetable oil (peanut or canola oil—your choice)
1/2 cup water
1-1/2 cups broccoli florets
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into strips
6 or 8 shitaki mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tbsp rice vinegar
pinch crushed red pepper
2 tsp cornstarch dissolved in ¼ cup water
1 small can chunked pineapple, drained (use juice above)
1/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted

2 cups cooked rice


Now, as to the procedure:

Peel and de-vein your shrimp and place them in a small mixing bowl. Add your lemon juice, the soy sauce, and the rice wine vinegar. Let your shrimp swim around in the bowl in the fridge for a half hour or so—mine went a little over an hour.

While the shrimp are marinadeing, slice up your vegetables.

After the shrimp marinaded, heat a large heavy skillet over medium heat, and add your oil. When your oil has come up to temperature, toss in your shrimp and stir fry them for a couple of minutes on each side until they start turning pink, then remove them to a bowl and reserve on the side.

Now add a ½ cup of water and bring it to a simmer and add your broccoli. Be careful to adjust your heat so the water doesn’t boil. Cook the broccoli for a couple of minutes or so, then add your bell pepper and mushrooms and keep simmering.


Place two large pasta bowls in the oven to preheat, get out your chargers, and start cooking your rice.

Mix together the pineapple juice, the remaining water, soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, vinegar, crushed pepper, and cornstarch mixture and pour it over your cooking vegetables.

Keep cooking everything until the sauce bubbles and thickens—that’s what the cornstarch does for you.

When your sauce is about done, add your shrimp back in the skillet along with the pineapple chunks and stir everything up. Cook another couple of minutes, but try not to over cook your shrimp.

Put some rice in your bowls, spoon your stir fry over your rice, sprinkle with almonds, sit down at the table, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Shrimp Creole

OK, it happened accidentally.

I did NOT want to go to the grocery store today. I also did NOT want to eat chicken for dinner.

I started early (10:00 AM) thinking about and looking for something new to cook, and it could only involve things that we already had in our pantry and fridge.

I found it about 10:30 in my Betty Crocker cookbook—Shrimp Creole.

I checked our cooking inventory and guess what? We had all of the stuff already in stock, but of course "I" couldn’t just use the simple Betty Crocker recipe.

With the idea in mind, next I did a Google search and found this incredibly elaborate recipe and this slightly more realistic listing of ingredients. The only problem was that both recipes (and most of the others I found) made enough food for 6 or 8 people…

I’m cooking for only two people, remember?

So here is what you need to do what I did tonight:

2 tbsp corn oil (I was out of olive oil...AAAHHHH)
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp all purpose flour (plus a little more in case you need it)

½ colored bell pepper (I used red) diced
¼ Vidalia onion, diced
¼ red onion, diced
1 stalk celery, diced

15 oz can diced tomatoes
7 oz can tomato sauce (no salt)
15 oz can chicken broth

½ pound (about 10 or 12) medium shrimp, peeled and de-veined

And finally, some store- bought or home-made Creole seasoning. (I made my own in a big batch.)

Here is what I did with all of the above stuff to make a hearty dinner for two:

First, peal and de-vein your shrimp if you didn’t buy them that way. Toss them in a bowl, squeeze a little lemon juice over them, a dash of Worcestershire, add a tablespoon of olive oil, and sprinkle lightly with your Creole seasoning. Toss the shrimp to coat evenly and refrigerate them while they (the shrimp) swim around and get all tasty and comfortable.

Next I made what my Cajun friends would call a “blond” roux.

To do this, heat a small skillet on the stovetop over medium low heat, melt your butter, add your 2 tbsp of oil, and sprinkle in your flour until it is all mixed together. Now stand at the stove and pay attention, stirring virtually continuously as the mixture browns and thickens. Watch the temperature—you burn it—you start all over from scratch.

Cook your roux for at least 15 or 20 minutes, until it is a nice blond color.

Now turn off the heat and let your roux cool down while you dice your vegetables. Using a large, heavy skillet, splash in a bit of vegetable oil and add your onion. Sautee the onion for 10 or 15 minutes.

Now add the celery and bell pepper to the skillet with your onion and continue cooking for another 10 minutes.

After the vegetables are cooked, spoon in your “blond” roux and splash in a bit of chicken broth, along with the diced tomatoes, and the tomato sauce. Also add 1 teaspoon of your Creole Seasoning

Redneck Tip: Add more seasoning if you want, but be careful now...don't hurt yourself...

Crank up the heat to medium and bring things to a low simmer. If you have the time to cook, why not thin things out real good with the rest of the chicken stock, but allow at least 45 minutes to cook things back down nice and thick. Turn the heat down to medium low and keep a lid on your skillet to slow things down a little.

Now let me ask you a question: “You know how to make rice?”

You do?

Well make yourself a batch—instant or whatever. I made a couple of cups worth of Mahatma brand.

When the Creole sauce has cooked down to the consistency of a thin gravy, pull your shrimp out of the fridge and toss them into the mix for ten or fifteen minutes. By the way--taste your sauce.

Does it need anything?

Well add it then--it's your dinner.

Make sure that you stir it all up real good. When you are satisfied with the results (or too hungry to wait any longer), dip out some rice into a bowl, ladle some sauce and shrimp on top, slice up a Baggett to dip, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

On Tonight's Menu...

Shrimp Creole...

Please stop back by later tonight for the details. Meanwhile--I've got to go make a "blond" Roux.

Don't you wish you were dining with me on St. Simons tonight?

Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Chicken Breasts

With Grilled Yellow Corn And Sweet Potatoes

This meal was an accidental group effort on the charcoal grill. We already had two ears of yellow corn and one large sweet potato that I had purchased earlier last week. Last Thursday afternoon Pat sent me to the grocery store with a demand for some items including boneless skinless chicken breasts if they could be had for less than $10 each.

We were in luck--they were on sale—buy one, get one free. (I think that we call that deal “half price” in Alabama.)

Any way, I arrived home with the chicken and the inevitable extra impulse items that I always buy like spices and such, and the next task was to decide how to cook the chicken.

We eat so much of it (chicken), we’re finding it (chicken) to be a little B-O-R-I-N-G.

You know?

Can't have that

We soaked the ears of corn with the husks on in a big boiler, and Pat pealed and diced the sweet potato into ¾” cubes, and placed it in a double thickness aluminum foil pack with some brown sugar, butter, and a little olive oil.

I fumbled around lighting the grill and ran back and forth to the computer looking at recipes. We found this one for Bacon Wrapped Chicken that I modified as follows:

The Ingredients:

Two medium chicken breasts
Four slices of thick bacon

4 ounces (½ pack) cream cheese
½ tsp dried tarragon
½ tsp black pepper
1 scallion (green onion) diced
Splash of white truffle oil (if you got it)

The process:

Soak your ears of corn in water for a while, then drain them and wrap them tightly in aluminum foil. Throw them on the grill.

Do the same with your sweet potato cubes (not soaked in water--wrapped in foil…you fool.)

In a small mixing bowl, combine your cream cheese, tarragon, pepper, scallion, and truffle oil and mix well.

Meanwhile, while your potatoes and ears of corn are cooking on the grill, rinse off your chicken breasts and pat them dry on your cutting board. Take a sharp paring knife and slice into the fat side of the breast horizontally to form a nice deep pocket in which to place your cream cheese mixture. Try not to cut all the way through the breast except on one side.

Now spoon your cream cheese mixture into the pocket in the breast and pinch everything tightly closed around it. The cheese mixture will act sort of like glue and hold it closed.

Take two slices of bacon and wrap the whole thing up, and pin the bacon tightly around the breast with two or three toothpicks.

After the corn and potatoes have been on the grill for twenty or twenty five minutes, place your chicken on the grill and let everybody get to know each other. Be sure that you make proper introductions –I hate cooking and eating with total strangers.

Let the chicken cook for about 10 to 12 minutes, then turn it over and give it another 10 minutes or so.

If you have done everything correctly, it should look like this:



Yummy!!

Enjoy Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Laughing In The Face of Death

Well, the good news is that Hurricane Dennis isn't coming anywhere near St. Simons this afternoon, and the 5:00 PM National Weather Service forecast track has the storm moving ever so slightly back to the west, AWAY from my mother's property.

We have had a bit of excitement here this afternoon, I had to do an emergency delivery. Here is a picture of the insturments I used:


Surgical instruments...

And here is a picture of the results of my efforts (the delivery took almost four hours):


I'ts a Boy...er...I mean a Pork Butt

I'm a proud father of a bouncing 5 pound baby Pork Butt. Don't you wish that you were me?

Here, have a Cigar...

(Please excuse me while I dual post this on both my blogs for my non-political readers)

Fancy Asian Cold Slaw

Sorry Y’all, but my holiday cooking and entertaining has taken prescient over my writing the past four days, so I’m taking this opportunity to catch up a little.

I don’t necessarily write about everything I cook because some stuff is so elementary, but since I write a cooking blog I do try to outline the trends in my cooking and let people know what I’ve been up to.

I did Beer Butt Chickens last Thursday night for our holiday guests and made red potato salad and cold slaw as side dishes. The cold slaw recipe came out of an old copy of Bon Appetit magazine—the July 1998 print edition. I love the recipe, but I must admit that if you can get three teenaged girls to devour the slaw without objection I must be on to something here.

Here is what I did to make a generous portion of slaw for seven people:

½ head (about 5 cups) of green cabbage
¼ head (about 2-1/2 cups) of red cabbage
1 red bell pepper, cut into matchstick sized strips
1 yellow bell pepper, cut into matchstick sized strips
1 medium carrot, peeled and cut into matchstick sized strips
½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped
4 green onions, cut into matchstick sized strips (optional)

For the preliminary dressing:

4 tbsp rice vinegar
4 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
1-1/2 tbsp golden brown sugar
1 tbsp minced peeled fresh ginger
1 tbsp minced fresh garlic

For the final dressing

4 tbsp rice vinegar
4 tbsp vegetable oil
5 tbsp smooth peanut butter
2 tbsp soy sauce
1-1/2 tbsp golden brown sugar
1 tbsp minced peeled fresh ginger
1 tbsp minced fresh garlic

Prepare your cabbage with a food processor or by hand. I used the food processor. Take the time to julienne by hand the bell peppers, carrot, and onions because your efforts will make a beautiful presentation. Use the food processor for everything if you must.

Whisk the six ingredients for the preliminary dressing together in a small bowl and let stand at room temperature for a half hour, then toss it with your vegetables.

Whisk the seven ingredients for the final dressing together in your bowl and leave it sitting out at room temperature while your veggies sit in the fridge for an hour or two.

When you fire up your grill, toss the final dressing with the slaw and refrigerate everything until you are ready to eat.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Beer Butt Chicken

I’m used to cooking for only two people most of the time—at most two couples.

That isn’t my present circumstance, however.I’m cooking for SEVEN—four adults and three hungry teen girls that seem to want a snack every hour, on the hour.

While a couple pounds of lunch meat and cheese and a few loaves of bread can take care of lunch, dinner is another matter entirely.

My solution, when the going gets tough, the tough crack out…

THE CHARCOAL GRILL.

I’m what you call a Grill Snob. A so called purist…I’m a charcoal man through and through, and I absolutely refuse to use any petroleum products in association with my grilling.

No Propane. No lighter fluid. I have an electric resistance starter for my charcoal. It takes a little longer, but your food doesn’t smell like a diesel truck transmission when you get through cooking it.

There is usually some beer involved in the process, however, and yesterday I found a new use for beer in association with grilling. I cooked something called beer butt chicken—two four pounders—for dinner.

Did I mention that they were delicious?

And really moist?

Well they were.

That is the point in cooking beer butts. You pour ¼ of the beer in each can out into an aluminum pan, stick the beer can with the rest of the beer into the cavity in the chicken, and sit the whole shebang on the grill. The beer in the can boils out while you are cooking and keeps the bird nice and juicy, while the beer in the pan evaporates and keeps the outside wet.

My chickens spent the night before cooking in a nice brine solution, then I did my spicy BBQ rub on one and cooked the other plain (other than a little salt and pepper.) I served my home made Kansas City style BBQ sauce on the side, along with a fancy Asian cold slaw and Red Potato salad.

Don't you wish you were hanging out on St. Simons Island with me this weekend?

Ham & Asparagus Crepes

Some people say “real men don’t eat Crepes.”

Not me—I love Crepes.

I’d rather cook and eat Crepes than spend my time being a creep like some men that say “real men don’t eat Crepes.

Know what I mean?

I’ve been cooking crepes and serving them for brunch every few months for the past three years or so. They are not hard—just slightly intimidating in their own special way.

The basic recipe is pretty standard, but I found these guys to have the best description of the actual process involved in cooking your crepes.

While my recipe is designed to make four or five medium crepes—enough to serve breakfast for two—it only takes slightly longer to make twenty crepes.

My ingredients were:

For the Crepes:

½ cup of milk
2 eggs
1/3 cup of flour
A pinch of salt
¼ stick butter


For the filling:

8 slices deli ham (like you’d use on a sandwich)
1 can Green Giant Asparagus
½ block cream cheese


For the sauce:

1 package Knorr Hollandaise sauce mix


Start out by slowly melting ¼ stick of butter in a small boiler over medium heat.

Next, let your milk and eggs sit out on the counter top for a half hour to warm up. Sift and measure your flour into a mixing bowl, then whisk together the milk and eggs and add them to your flour and salt. Mix everything up real good with an electric mixer or in the blender, and then let it sit a few minutes to let the bubbles settle out.

Heat your Crepe pan or a medium skillet over medium low heat. On my stovetop the setting is about 2-3/4 on a scale of 1 to 10.

Once the skillet has heated up, brush it lightly with some of your melted butter and then pour ¼ cup of your batter mixture into the middle of the skillet and tilt the skillet around to get a thin, even circular puddle.

Redneck Tip: If your are not sure of the skillet temperature, pour just a little silver dollar size puddle out in the skillet, saving the rest of the batter for your next effort until you see if the skillet is too hot or too cold (mine was too hot the first time and I threw away a whole Crepe.)

Cook each crepe about two or three minutes until the edges start to curl upward, then carefully lift it with a metal spatula and flip it over in the skillet. Cook it about another minute, and then place it on a plate on the side.

Keep brushing out the butter and cooking crepes until you run out of batter, paying attention that the skillet doesn’t cool off too much or overheat and burn your Crepes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and pre grease a 9”x9” Pyrex dish.

The filling part of this recipe is really easy. Lay a Crepe in the middle of a clean plate. Cover two thirds of it with two pieces of sliced ham. Lay two or three pieces of canned Asparagus side by side in the middle of the ham. Place two pieces of crème cheese end to end on top of the Asparagus, roll your filled crepe up, and place it in your baking dish.

When the Crepes are all rolled up and in the dish, cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil and toss the dish in the oven for 20 minutes.

While your Crepes are baking, make up your Knorr sauce or a homemade cheese sauce.

After 20 minutes or so, pull the foil off the dish and let things cook uncovered another five minutes while your stir your sauce.

Pull the dish out of the oven, place two crepes in the middle of your plate, spoon out some of your sauce, sit down at the table, and EAT!


Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

When Life Gives You Lemons...

Make Lemonaid...

Well, the Blogskin that I've used with "The Redneck Gourmet" since last December somehow lost it's mind while publishing a new recipe on Saturday, and I'm not smart enough to fix the original trashy HTML code contained in the "free template" that I had hardly paid attention to in the past six months.

After about two hours of trying to debug another rocket scientist's coding, I gave up and picked a new skin from blogger. This one needs some work, but the cascading style sheet format and cleaner code is something that I can work with.

After I cook some breakfast and my head stops hurting from trying to debug the old code, I'll try to get the archives section, the links, and the site meter reinstalled.

Wish me luck

The Redneck Gourmet Programmer

Greek Burritos

I had a pack of ground beef laying in the fridge that I had thawed out on Friday afternoon. I knew that I had to cook it soon else it would go bad, but Pat and I didn’t want hamburgers tonight.

Besides hamburgers and meat loaf, what else can you do with ground beef? Oh, I almost forgot stuffed bell peppers…any way…

A quick Google search yielded this recipe for Greek Pocket Sandwiches. The only problem was, I didn’t have any pita bread in the house. What I did have instead was some large flour tortillas.

Is there such a thing as Greek Burritos? No?

Well, I'd like to take this opportunity to announce that there is now something called “Greek Burritos,” and here is what you need to make four of them:

For the meat filling:

¼ large white onion-diced
¼ large red onion-diced
1 carrot, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, diced fine

2 tbsp bacon grease (or olive oil)
10 oz ground beef
(1) 8 oz can diced tomatoes
½ small can tomato paste
2/3 can of beef stock

½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp cumin powder
¼ tsp red pepper
¼ tsp allspice
¼ tsp paprika
¼ tsp salt

For the cucumber yogurt sauce:

½ medium cucumber, seeded and diced super fine
4 oz plain yogurt
garlic powder or one clove fresh garlic, diced super fine
1 scallion, diced (you guessed it) super fine

2 handfuls of organic salad greens if you want a little salad on the side

Now get out your largest heavy skillet and put it and the bacon grease on the stove over medium low heat. Add your diced onions and sauté for five minutes or so. Now add the carrots and keep sautéing.

When the carrots have softened a little, add the garlic and a splash of beef broth. Cook everything for another five minutes or so, then add your ground beef and break it up well with your spatula.

Now add all of your spices.

Redneck Tip: Be careful not to burn off your nose hairs enjoying the spice aroma—keep your face a safe distance away from the skillet.

Continue cooking the beef until it is nicely browned, then tilt your skillet sideways and spoon off any excess grease.

Redneck Tip: I left my grease in my skillet because I have a food induced death wish.

Now add the diced tomatoes, the tomato paste, and pour in some more of your beef stock. Bring everything to a nice low simmer, cover the mixture, and make your dressing.

Place your cucumber in a fine mesh colander and add ½ tsp salt. Let it set for five or ten minutes, then press the cucumber with the back of a large spoon to drain the water, then put your pressed cucumber into a small mixing bowl. Now add the yogurt, garlic, and scallion and stir it all up to combine well. Place it in the fridge to chill.

Place your plates in the oven to pre-heat and get out your chargers. Wrap your tortillas in aluminum foil and toss them in the oven on top of your plates.

Check the meat mixture every five or ten minutes and stir it with your spatula to keep it from sticking. Keep cooking the meat until it is nice and thick, then pull the lid off and cook five minutes more.

Pull the plates out of the oven, place a warm tortilla in the middle, spoon out some of the meat mixture, drizzle some of your sauce down the middle, roll the whole thing up, and EAT.

(Place your greens on a chilled plate on the side and top with some more cucumber sauce if you want a salad.)

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet.

Grilled Stuffed Bell Peppers (Updated)

I was wandering around in the produce section of the grocery store today and noticed colored bell peppers on sale--$0.99 each. I love colored bells, so I bought two yellow and two red.

We cook with bell peppers a good deal when they are available for a reasonable price, but I don’t really need four whole peppers diced up right now and I hated to freeze fresh peppers so soon after buying them.

After looking through the fridge and pantry, I decided to make stuffed bell peppers for dinner—on the grill. As you may know, stuffed peppers usually consist of a mixture of meat, spices, and cheese, baked in the oven. Since I didn’t think that the peppers could stand cooking on the grill long enough to get the meat stuffing properly cooked, I precooked the stuffing in the skillet and things worked out well. Regarding ingredients, I used what I used, but you can feel free to experiment with your own combinations of sausage, beef, pork, lamb, and different cheeses like Monterey jack, Swiss, cheddar, you name it.

Here is what you will need to make my version of stuffed colored bell peppers:

Three large colored bell peppers

1 tbsp olive oil
¼ onion, diced fine
1 stalk celery, diced fine
1 clove garlic, pealed and diced very fine
½ lb ground beef
1 tbsp of Worcestershire Sauce
black pepper

1 package Lipton Fiesta Sides Mexican Rice

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

First things first—fire up your charcoal grill. I use charcoal with an electric starter—a thing that gets hot like the eye of an electric range—in order to avoid using lighter fluid. I hate eating food that smells like someone poured kerosene on it. Call me a charcoal snob, and use a gas grill if you must…

I ‘ve been using the Lipton Fiesta Sides instant rice for a while now. It produces good results, fast. Cook it according to the package directions (it’s done in 7 minutes); else make your own plain white or brown rice. You’ll need about 1-1/2 to 2 cups of finished rice, regardless of how long it takes to cook.

Heat a large heavy skillet over medium heat, adding your olive oil. Sautee the onions for a couple of minutes, then add the celery and cook another couple of minutes. Now add the garlic and cook until the onions are clear.

While the veggies are sautéing, slice your peppers in half lengthwise and remove the seeds and “gills.” Brush the outside of the peppers with a little olive oil and distribute ½ cup of mozzarella cheese equally inside the pepper halves.

Add the ground beef and Worcestershire Sauce and cook until the beef is lightly browned. Stir in ½ cup of mozzarella cheese, turn off the heat, and let everything cool.

Redneck Update (June 27th): I cooked stuffed bells again this evening and realized that in the original recipe write up I forgot to mention adding the cooked rice to the meat/veggie/cheese mixture at this time. Please accept my appology Ladies and Gentlemen.

Spoon the cooled meat/veggie/cheese/rice mixture into the pepper halves and top with a little extra cheese (I used parmesan.)

Meanwhile back at the grill, spread out your coals (gas grill users—adjust your flame to a height less that three feet) and brush your grill grate with olive oil or spray it with a non-stick spray.

Place the stuffed peppers on the grill and go fix yourself a drink—you’re almost done. Let the peppers cook for ten or fifteen minutes (depends on how hot your grill is), then move them round and turn them 90 degrees and make sure that they are not burning. When you can’t wait any longer, pull them off the grill, place them on a plate, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Peasant Pasta with Meatballs and Veggie Parmesan Cream Sauce

We had a bad computer day on Wednesday here on St. Simons Island. We’re still suffering from some as yet unidentified problem that Adelphia says is in our PC’s, but we can’t explain since my laptop works OK on our back up dial up connection. Pat’s notebook is on it’s way via Fed-EX back to her corporate IT department for a tune up so we are a one PC family for couple of days.

Adding insult to injury, our condo air conditioner is running at about 50% capacity—in layman’s terms, our interior forecast is slightly warm, with a good chance of cooling down after the sun sets this evening. In the mean time, it’s about 80 degrees.

In an effort to cook dinner and not heat the kitchen up too much with the stove, I looked into doing some sort of quick pasta dish.

This recipe supplied the inspiration for the veggies. I added this simple Parmesan cream sauce. I also did my own variation of Italian meatballs.

Here is what you will need to make a fast dinner for two:

6 oz Assuntine Tricolore Pasta (or penne, rotinni, or other pasta of your choice)

½ lb ground sirloin
1 spicy hot Italian sausage
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 egg
1 tsp black pepper
Breadcrumbs

1 stick semi-sweet unsalted butter
¼ cup diced red bell pepper
1 carrot, sliced thin
1 cup heavy cream
fresh ground black pepper

OK, no fooling around here—we’re in a hurry. Fill a medium boiler with a couple of quarts of water and place it on the stove on medium heat.

Also toss your largest heavy skillet on the stove on medium heat and add a splash of olive oil.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine your Italian sausage, ground beef, and the egg. Now add your spices and the Worcestershire sauce and mix everything up real well. Add a little breadcrumbs to stiffen things up. The amount of breadcrumbs will vary based on the amount of fat in your ground beef—I used about two tablespoons.

Now scoop out some of the meat mixture and make yourself eight or ten small meatballs. Pinch a chunk of meat mixture out and roll it up in a ball in your hands and place the meatball in the skillet.

When you have all of the meatballs made and they are cooking along, carefully lift and turn them several times to brown nicely on the outside and ensure that they are done at least medium well inside. When they are all cooked, pull the meatballs out and place them on a plate on the side.

By now your water should be boiling. Add a teaspoon of salt, a drizzle of olive oil, and dump in your pasta to cook based on the package instructions. I like mine al dente.

Turn the heat down on the skillet slightly and add ¼ stick of butter. As your butter melts, scrape the skillet to break loose the flavorful chunks of meat left over from cooking your meatballs. Add your red bell pepper and carrot and sauté until tender, then add the rest of the butter and kick the heat back up slightly until the butter is melted and starting to bubble.

Pour in the cream and do not walk away from the stove until you are finished cooking. You have to watch and stir this mixture almost continuously or you WILL burn it and will be stuck eating McDonalds burgers for dinner. We can’t have that, can we?

As your cream sauce starts to thicken, add your meatballs back in and keep stirring. Add a couple of twists of fresh ground black pepper. Keep stirring.

Place your pasta bowls in the oven to preheat.

When your pasta is done, pour it into a colander and drain it well, then dump it into the skillet with the meatballs and sauce. Let everything cook another couple of minutes.

Pull your pasta bowls out of the oven, place them on chargers, pour half of your mixture into each bowl, grab couple of forks, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Dutch Noodle Soup

Pat and I are traveling on vacation this week so I haven’t had many chances to cook—but I have had plenty of chances to eat some good food. Lots of Polish and German influenced food like sour kraut, sausages, perogies, chipped ham—things that you can’t get in Georgia—at least not in the quality that they have here in Pennsylvania.

Pat’s daughter, Kris, cooked this old Kovach family recipe called Dutch Noodle Soup for us the evening we arrived. It was excellent.

Here is what you will need:

3 lb beef roast
1 large onion, diced
4 or 5 carrots, diced
4 stalks celery, diced
a handful of fresh parsley, chopped
salt to taste
fresh ground black pepper
paprika
basil
oregano
1 bay leaf
2 large cans pureed tomatoes

For the “Noodles”:

5 to 7 cups flour
6 eggs
¾ cup warm water

For the “Noodle filling”:

2 lbs sausage
1 small onion, diced fine
1 egg

First you need to cook your roast. Place it in a 6 quart boiler and add enough water to cover the roast about half way. Add your onion, carrots, celery, parsley, salt (watch the quantity), a couple twists of fresh black pepper, and the rest of your spices.

Kick on the heat to medium high and bring everything to a low boil, then back the heat off to a simmer and add your tomatoes. Now cover the pot and let the roast slow cook for a couple of hours. After two hours, check the roast and keep cooking until it is tender and falls apart easily.

Turn off the heat, remove your roast to a plate, and let everything cool down a little while you make your noodle filling and dough.

For the filling, combine the sausage, onion, and egg in a large mixing bowl and stir it all up well to combine.

In another mixing bowl, start out with five cups of flour, reserving two cups to add if you need it for consistency. Make a hole in the middle of your pile of flour, add your eggs, and start mixing. When everything is combined well, start drizzling in your warm water. Did I say keep mixing? You want the dough to be slightly sticky so go easy on the water. If you get things too thin, just add a little more flour to thicken things up.

Now lightly flour your working surface and place 1/6th of the dough in the middle and roll it out evenly until it is a very thin circle—1/8” thick or so.

Place 1/6th of your sausage filling in the middle of the dough circle and spread it out so that it nearly covers the entire area of the dough. Now roll up your noodle dough around the sausage to form a long tube and slice the tube into ¾” pieces.

Meanwhile, back with the roast, after it has cooled off, pick through the meat and remove any pieces of fat or bone that you don’t want to eat. Tear the meat up into chunks not larger than 1” or so.

Now put the meat and your noodles back in the pot with the liquid you cooked the roast in and add an additional 2 or 3 quarts of water to the pot. Turn the heat back on and bring it back to a low simmer and cook for an additional hour to hour and one half, longer if you have the time.

When you run out of patience, turn off the heat, dip some soup out into bowls, grab a soup spoon, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

The Galloping Redneck Gourmet

The Redneck Gourmet is going to be the Galloping Gourmet for ten days beginning Saturday. Wish us good weather, on-time airline flights, and a clean rental car.

We’ll be traveling to Pittsburg and Erie, Pennsylvania; Charleston, West Virginia; and a tiny town in Southern Ohio that you’ve probably never heard of—all family related. It’s funny how that, even though you live on an island with a swimming pool and beach, none of your relatives can ever manage to get off their butts and visit you—you have to come to them, you know?

The good news is that there are a number of good restaurants we get to dine at, including Joe Fazio’s, a well-known Italian place in Charleston that has served national celebrities and politicians for over fifty years.

The bad news is, in addition to either no Internet access in some homes or slow dial up service in some of the hotels, I won’t have any pots, pans, and spices unless I can kick someone out of their kitchen to cook a meal, and experimentation will probably be out of the question, so my posting will be light over this period of time.

I’ll try to give a couple of updates and please check back here to The Redneck Gourmet when I get back in town to see what I’ve been up to.

Regards Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Spicy Stuffed Blue Cheese Burgers

I love strong flavored cheeses like Blue Cheese. Our local grocer has a good assortment of cheeses and I often splurge on Brie, localetti Romano/Parmesan, and really good blue cheese in a solid block.

It can get sort of pricy, but I think that it is worth the cost. With our current emphasis on grilling, last Sunday I decided to copy something I saw Emeril do on Food Network.

To make three large burgers, you will need:

1-1/4 pounds of 90% lean ground beef
8 to 10 ounces of chunk blue cheese
1 egg
¼ medium onion, diced fine
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp garlic powder
Fresh ground black pepper
Salt (as much as your blood pressure can stand)
1 tsp cayenne pepper
Unseasoned breadcrumbs

Here is what you do to put it all together:

Dump your ground beef into a mixing bowl and smash it out flat with your fist. Now add the egg, the diced onion, the Worcestershire sauce, the garlic powder, twist in the black pepper with your pepper mill, add a teaspoon or so of salt, and the cayenne pepper.

Massage everything together with your fingers. If you are squeamish or a city slicker, use a big wooden spoon or a dough cutter. Don’t overwork the mixture, just get it combined evenly.

Now look at what you have put together. Is it too moist? Then toss in some breadcrumbs to thicken things up and make it hold together a little better. The amount will depend on the quality and fat content of your ground beef.

When you are satisfied with your mixture, reach in and divide it up into three equal balls. Are they equal? No? Then adjust them by pinching off a little meat from the ones that are too big and add it to the ones that are too small.

Divide the three balls in half each. You should have six blobs of ground beef mixture. Flatten the blobs out into 3/8” thick patties about 4” to 5” in diameter.

Now crumble up your blue cheese and place 1/3 of the cheese into the middle of three of the patties. Add a second patty on top of the blue cheese and carefully squeeze the two patties together around the cheese, pinching the edges together to close up the “seam.”

You should now have three nice, fat, blue cheese stuffed burgers.

Fire up the grill, toss them on, cook them done like you like them, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Baby Back Pork Ribs

Sometimes I surprise myself.

Today’s Memorial Day BBQ effort was one of those events that you can't plan in advance—it just happens. We cooked ribs on the grill by the neighborhood pool.

In addition to charcoal and hickory chips, we also used up a bunch of ice, rum, and tequila in the blender poolside and entertained some innocent bystanders as our neighbors wandered into the proceedings. Can you say “drive-by BBQ?”

I barely got to eat any of the ribs myself. Oh well...

By cooking ribs, I don’t mean that I stripped the plastic wrap off the ribs and tossed them on the grill—no sir, I gave my baby back pork ribs a day at the health spa. If I were a rib, I would have been quite happy doing what my ribs did today.

Here’s what I did with (to) my ribs…

First there was a nice BRINE BATH:

1-1/2 gallon of water (enough for three or four racks of ribs)
½ cup of kosher salt
½ cup of sugar
2/3 cup white vinegar
2/3 cup apple cider vinegar
(Increase the proportions of the ingredients if you need more water)

Put the brine together in a large covered boiler (mine was a three gallon pot.) Open your rib packaging and rinse the ribs off under cold water in the sink. Place the ribs on a cutting board and carefully strip off the “skin” membrane on the back side (the concave side.) Also cut away any extra chunks of fat and membrane that you don’t want to eat. By now your ribs should look very pretty.

Place your ribs in the brine, put the pot in the refrigerator, and let them swim around overnight, or for at least six hours (mine went about eight hours.)

When you are ready to cook your ribs, pull them out of the brine and place them in a pan or on a cookie sheet to drain for a few minutes. Pat them dry with a clean dish rag.

Next my ribs had a nice RUBDOWN:

1/8 cup black pepper
1/8 cup paprika
1-1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp cayenne pepper

Mix up the rub in a mixing bowl, then store it in a small jar or plastic container until you are ready to use it. Sprinkle the rub over the ribs and rub it in with your fingers.

Then my Ribs went into a HOT SAUNA:

Now Your ribs need to go on the grill to cook. Don't use a gas grill (OK, if you must, you must), but don't just pile a bunch of charcoal brickettes up and light them using "Gulflight" lighter fluid...that stuff stinks. I use an electric grill starter and for these ribs you want to use indirect heat. After the coals are hot, push the charcoal over to the sides of the grill and cook the ribs over a pan of water in the center. I stood my rib racks up on their sides vertically, leaning against each other for support.

Now here is the important part--regulate your grill temperature to somewhere between 200 deg F and 250 deg F. Use those vents and dampers on the grill, don't just stand there and complain, burning off your eyebrows and the hair on your knuckles. (Sorry, I guess that ladies don't have hair on their knuckles?)

If you will keep the temperature under control, you can expect to spend between 2-1/2 and 3 hours fooling around at the pool or otherwise waiting while the ribs get nice and tender. Pour yourself a drink and relax...this is supposed to be vacation, not work, you know?

For my ribs "suntan lotion," I made some Kansas City Style BBQ Sauce:

½ cup light (or dark) brown sugar
1 tbsp dry mustard powder
1 tbsp dried ginger
½ tbsp chili powder
½ tsp cayenne pepper
½ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp allspice
3 cups catsup
¼ cup black strap molasses
¼ cup water
½ cup white vinegar

I took the rib racks off the grill at about the 2-1/2 hour point and brushed them all over with a thick coating of the BBQ sauce, then put them back on the grill for the final half hour of cooking.

By the time my ribs had finished, I had collected a couple of kids and five other adults that had designs on sampling the results of my efforts.

We broke out the slaw, potato salad, and sliced up a fresh pineapple and ATE. (Did I mention the home-made Key Lime Pie for desert?)

Regards Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Boston Baked Beans

Continuing our Memorial Day and Summer Cookout theme, I decided to attack home made baked beans. I’m not talking about opening a can of Bush’s beans or other store bought beans and adding brown sugar and stuff.

Nooooooooo sir… I’m into pain.

I want to make real authentic home made Boston Baked Beans. After doing some checking around on the Internet it became fairly obvious that the recipe is simple, it just takes all day to make your beans properly.

I really liked the simplicity of this 1940’s Gourmet Magazine recipe for Boston Baked Beans. I also referred to this recipe.

I ended up using these ingredients:

1 lb dried navy beans
1 pork neck bone
2 tbs butter
½ onion, finely chopped
½ tsp dried English mustard
¼ tsp paprika
½ cup black strap molasses
¼ cup dark brown sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

The night before you want to cook your beans, place them in a 4 quart boiler and add enough cold water to cover about an inch. I fooled around and started soaking my beans at 4:00 AM and let them soak till noon. Change your water once while your beans are swimming and pick through the beans to remove any dark or “stung” beans that might be less than appetizing to eat.

After the beans have soaked for at least six hours, place the boiler on the stovetop and fire up the heat to medium high. Bring the beans to a slow boil and add your pork neck bone and a couple of twists of fresh ground black pepper

Step away from the stove and let your beans boil for at least one hour. Mine could have cooked a little longer, so I suggest cooking 1-1/2 to 2 hours if you like your beans really tender.

Now dice your onion really fine. Some people like to put big chunks or “rings” of onion in their baked beans. Not me, but to each their own. Cut your onion the way you like.

I also like my onion sautéed, so I melted a couple of table spoons of butter in a small boiler and cooked my onions until they were clear and tender. You can use your onions raw, however, if you want to.

When the beans are done boiling, turn off the heat and let them cool down a little. Now dip a half cup of the water off of the beans and add to the onions in the other boiler. Stir in the light and dark brown sugar, the paprika, the mustard, and the molasses. A little salt and a couple twists of fresh black pepper can’t hurt—you decide how much.

Fish out your pork neck bone and place it aside (don’t toss it in the trash-you’ll need it later. Now drain your cooked beans in a colander, reserving the liquid. Dump the beans back in the boiler, stir the onion/sugar/spice/molasses mixture into the beans and add about ½ cup of the reserved water.

Now, if you don’t have an oven safe bean pot, use a covered casserole dish that is at least 4” deep. Also, if you don’t want to spend an hour cleaning the dish and the lid, I suggest spraying both with a non-stick cooking spray.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place your pork neck bone in the middle of your bean pot and pour the bean mixture in around it. Just for fun I drizzled the top of the beans with some more molasses ‘cause I like molasses.

Cover the dish, place it in the oven, and turn the temperature down to 300 degrees F.

Wander off to the pool or go watch TV, checking back once an hour to see how your beans are baking. Notice how the color changes to a nice dark redish brown?

Hey, you there...get your spoon out of those beans!

Each time you check your progress, add a ¼ cup of your reserved bean cooking liquid to the baking beans to keep everything from drying out. After four hours, remove the lid and cook your beans another thirty minutes to an hour.

When you think the beans are done, pull them out of the oven and let them cool for ten or so minutes, then plate them up with your slaw, slice your meat(loaf) and EAT.


Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Hawaiian Cold Slaw

With Memorial Day rapidly approaching, Pat and I are getting the urge to expand our grilling and Summer cooking menu. Easy, light flavors, and simple “mass quantities” of foods designed to feed our guests lunch at the pool or be cooked and/or served at late afternoon cookouts.

I had to spend some time working on a set for a play at the local theater on Saturday so I charged Pat with coming up with a big batch of cold slaw for a couple of meals this weekend.

What she came up with is based on this recipe for Hawaiian Coleslaw.

As usual, we made a few modifications—adding fresh ginger root and substituting some red cabbage (we like the color.)

3 cups fresh, shredded green cabbage
1 cup fresh, shredded red cabbage
1 11 oz. can mandarin oranges
1 cup crushed pineapple, drained
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground ginger (use fresh ginger if you have it)
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg (use freshly grated if you have it)
1 tbsp. orange juice
1/4 tsp. white pepper
1/2 cup mayonnaise

This is pretty much a no-brainer recipe. Shred your cabbage by hand or with the food processor. Drain the oranges and pineapple, reserving the juice.

Toss the cabbage with the ginger, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

Redneck Tip: You can sprinkle a little of the reserved juices into the mix if you like your slaw juicier.

Add the drained fruit and toss well.

Now add the mayo, and toss some more. Cover and let the slaw sit overnight if you have the time—it will taste a lot better the next day.


Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

"Kicked Up" Meatloaf--Cooking Reruns

Today is a nice spring Sunday, with weather suitable for spending the afternoon at our swimming pool. Pat made a big batch of Hawaiian Cold Slaw yesterday, and I'm cooking Boston Baked Beans which will be in the oven for about five hours while I also cook my nose in the sun at the pool.

To go with our slaw and baked beans, I'm cooking a re-run recipe that I posted back around Thanksgiving. I found it on the Food Network website. The recipe is called Emeril’s “Most Kicked Up Meatloaf Ever.”

I made some modifications based on having dried spices rather than fresh. I've cooked it several times and found it to produce excellent results. No Catsup Required...

The modified ingredient listing, making enough for four to six people, looks like this:

3 tablespoons butter (or bacon drippings)
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 rib celery, finely chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, finely chopped
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
2 eggs
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/3 cup ketchup, plus 1/4 cup
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup Heavy cream
1/2 cup Breadcrumbs
1-1/4 pound ground chuck (try 90% lean—I used 80% and it was too greasy)
1/3 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoons plus 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Three or four medium potatoes, quartered (I omitted the potatoes since we had beans & slaw)
1 6oz jar green giant button mushrooms

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes

In a large heavy skillet, heat the bacon dripping over medium heat. Add all but about 4 tbsp of the chopped onion, the celery, and all but 2 tbsp of the bell pepper to the skillet and cook until they soften, about 5 minutes or so.

Add one tsp garlic, the thyme, rosemary, and the parsley and cook an additional 2 minutes. Set skillet aside to cool. Preheat your oven to 350 deg F.

Redneck Tip: Tilt your skillet slightly and spoon off any extra bacon grease that you can.

In a large mixing bowl, transfer the cooled vegetable mixture and add the eggs, the mustard, 1/3 cup of ketchup, the Worcestershire sauce, the cream, and mix well. Then add the breadcrumbs, ground chuck, salt, and pepper. Mix until everything is uniformly combined (no dry spots,) but don’t over mix.

Turn the whole blob out into a greased oval corningware casserole dish (I used an oval, 3” deep dish,) shape into a loaf with your hands. If you are using them, place your quartered red potatoes around the loaf in the dish.

In a small saucepan, combine the rest of the onion, garlic, the red bell pepper, ¼ cup ketchup, the red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and canned tomatoes. Bring the mixture to a boil over medium high heat and simmer for a few minutes to reduce slightly. Pour the mixture over the top of the meatloaf, sprinkle the button mushrooms on top of that, smooth out with a spoon, and toss the whole thing in the oven for 60 to 75 minutes.

Redneck Tip: At the hour mark, start checking every five minutes or so because you don’t want to burn the top of the loaf.

When you think it is done, turn off the oven and take the meatloaf out and set on a rack to cool for ten minutes or so. Put your plates in the oven for a minute to warm.

When the loaf has cooled a bit, put your warmed plates on chargers, slice the loaf, spoon out some of everything onto your plates, and serve with your slaw and baked beans or other vegetable on the side. No ketchup required!


Enjoy Ya’ll

The Redneck Gourmet

Pulled Pork Butt Barbeque

I was strolling past the meat counter at the local grocer the other day and noticed that they had Boston Butt Pork Roasts for half price--$0.98 per pound. I left the store with a five pounder in my cart.

My Butt sat in the fridge for a couple of days (sorry, I just couldn’t resist writing that without actually talking dirty) while I researched how to make pulled pork and my own barbeque sauce.

There are literally hundreds of opinions and recipes covering the subject in cookbooks, on TV shows, and on the internet, but the best ones all involve brining the pork before it is cooked and using a spice rub while it is cooked. Then, once you’ve brined your Butt and rubbed your Butt, you can grill your Butt, smoke your Butt, or roast your Butt in the oven. (Again sorry folks, I just couldn’t resist…)

Since we wanted to spend Sunday afternoon at the pool while the pork slow cooked, I chose roasting in the oven as my method du jour.

Here are the ingredients you’ll need to cook your Butt…snicker…snicker

For the Brine:

1 gallon of water (more if you have a bigger Butt than mine…heh)
¼ cup of kosher salt
¼ cup of sugar
½ cup white vinegar
½ cup apple cider vinegar
(Increase the proportions of the other ingredients if you need more water)

For the Rub:

1/8 cup black pepper
1/8 cup paprika
1-1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp salt
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp cayenne pepper

For ”Kansas City” style Barbeque Sauce:

½ cup light (or dark) brown sugar
1 tbsp dry mustard powder
½ tbsp chili powder
½ tsp cayenne pepper
½ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp allspice
3 cups catsup
¼ cup black strap molasses
¼ cup water
½ cup white vinegar
½ tsp Gravymaster flavoring/seasoning

First things first. The day or night before you’re going to cook your Butt you need to make up the brine.

I put the brine ingredients together in our largest 3 gallon boiler, stirred it all up, and put my Butt inside after trimming off the excess fat and any muscle “sheath” that is on the outside (hey, no comments please…)

Place your brined Butt in the refrigerator overnight, or at least six hours. I brined my Butt at about 3:00 AM and let it sit in the brine until noon the next day. It can actually stay in the brine for as long as two whole days.

Next make up the rub for your Butt. Simply mix all of the ingredients together in a small mixing bowl. I put mine “Butt rub” in a small jar so that I could save any left over for another Butt.

When you are ready to cook your Butt, pull it out of the brine, rinse it off real good in the sink, and place it on a platter to drain. Now pat your Butt dry with a clean dishtowel or paper towels. Dry off the platter also.

Now sprinkle your Butt rub all over your Butt and rub your Butt rub into the surface of your Butt with your hands (that has to be the record for the number of times I will write the word Butt” in one sentence in this recipe.)

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F.

Preheat an appropriate sized Dutch-oven on the stovetop over medium heat. Add a few tablespoons of olive oil. Now place your Butt in the Dutch-oven and sear it well on all sides.

Once your Butt is seared, turn it over on it’s side and add a ½ cup of liquid to the bottom of the pot. You can use water if you want, but I used a little white wine and some left over chicken stock that I had sitting in the fridge. A lot of juice will cook out of the meat while it is heating, but the wine/stock mixture adds some flavor and it just seemed like a good idea to me.

Toss your Butt in the oven and go watch TV or go to the pool…I sun burned my nose this afternoon waiting on my Butt to cook.

Now is the time to make your Barbeque sauce if your aren’t using store bought sauce. By the way, everyone knows that real men don’t use store bought sauce.

Put the brown sugar, mustard powder, and the spices in a heavy skillet over medium low heat. Add the Catsup, molasses, water, and vinegar, and stir everything together.

Keep you heat low enough to avoid boiling your sauce. You need to treat it like a roux or a gravy and stir almost continuously. It needs to cook at least thirty minutes while you pay close attention to it. Once it thickens to where you want it, turn off the heat and let it coast.

Keep cooking your Butt until the meat flakes apart easily. I turned my Butt over in the Dutch oven once while it was cooking to keep both sides of my Butt juicy (for some reason that sounds wrong…never mind…)

A general rule is to cook your Butt in the oven about one hour per pound—on the grill it takes about 1-1/2 hours per pound.

Once your Butt is cooked (as opposed to your Goose), pull it out of the pot and place it on a clean platter to rest for a few minutes. My Butt was tired after all that work.

Now tear your Butt up with a knife and fork, place it on top of a couple pieces of light bread on plates with some slaw and potato salad, top with barbeque sauce, pour yourself a cold beer, AND EAT!

Enjoy Y’all,


The Redneck Gourmet

(P.S, I actually got to write the word “Butt” 33 times in this recipe. Oh, to be thirteen years old again.)

UPDATE: May 16, 2005

After the meat cools, pick though it with your fingers to remove the fat and stuff you don't want to eat (I'm like Jack Spratt--I eat no fat) and place it in a covered container, adding the rest of your barbeque sauce, stirring everything up, and storing it in the fridge.

It heats up well in a small skillet to make sandwiches over the next few days, or you can freeze it for a few weeks.

Almond Tarragon Chicken Salad

Ok, we’ve all been through this process at one time or the other.

Its approaching noon on a weekday morning (or a weekend morning if you don’t work from home) and your significant other says “I’m Hungry…”

What do you do? A) Ignore their request (bad idea) B) go to the local deli to pick up a sandwich, or C) make something interesting to eat.

Well, for me, option A was out of the question, option B was a possibility, but I chose option C and made something to eat yesterday morning.

The idea came from an ad in the sale paper from a local grocery store—almond tarragon chicken salad. Pat thought that it tasted GOOD.

Here is what I did to make enough chicken salad for four sandwiches:

The Ingredients:

Two boneless chicken breasts—cooked as you like them (we used leftovers)
2 tbsp dried Tarragon (or fresh tarragon if you have it)
1 or 2 stalks of celery, diced very fine
½ cup sliced almonds
2 hard boiled eggs
5 tbsp low fat mayonnaise
½ tbsp white truffle oil
¼ tsp paprika
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp black pepper

The preparation:

Dice up your cooked chicken breasts very fine. Toss the chicken into a medium mixing bowl. Now dice up the boiled eggs and toss them in with the chicken.

Redneck Tip: Contrary to popular belief, it does NOT matter if the chicken or the egg comes first—at least in this recipe.

Crumble up the sliced almonds and add them to the bowl, along with the celery, the truffle oil, and all of the spices. Now stir everything up really good. I SAID STIR IT UP GOOD. (Stir some more if you have any doubt.)

Now add the mayo and stir everything again. Refrigerate until you are ready to make chicken salad sandwiches, else you can eat it as a side dish with burgers or dogs or whatever.

Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Pork Tamale Filling

(Putting it all together)

I’ve written pretty extensively about beef tamales earlier. They take a good deal of time to make, but I believe that if you use a great filling that they are well worth the effort.

If you’ve been following along and cooking with my recent posts, by now you should have one or more pounds of pre-cooked pork tenderloin, cooled on a plate, along with a pot of really tasty stock with vegetables cooling in the fridge.

Take your stock out of the fridge and spoon the congealed grease off of the top. Now dip out a couple of cups of the liquid, along with a cup of the carrots, onions, etc. and process the mixture in your blender or food processor. You want the vegetables in little bitty teeny tiny chunks.

Place the pork tenderloin on the cutting board and slice it across the grain into ½” pieces. If you did things right it should crumble into shreds while you’re doing this step. If not, tear the slices up into small pieces with your fingers.

Next comes the final seasoning—Menudo. I think that Menudo is Mexican for “every darn savory spice in your pantry” or something like that because that’s what’s in it. I found this recipe on the internet. I didn’t have all of the spices and I didn’t want SEVEN CUPS of Menudo seasoning, so here’s what I made up:

2-1/2 tbsp ground cumin
1-1/2 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp granulated garlic
1 tbsp onion powder
½ tsp powdered mustard
½ tsp oregano
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt

This should be more than enough seasoning for the pork and the chicken. I added three table spoons worth to my one pound of shreded pork.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of good extra virgin olive oil in a large deep skillet over medium low heat on the stove top.

Add your pork/spice mixture and sauté briefly, then add your processed stock and one can of chicken stock. You can also dice up some canned Chipolte peppers in Adobo sauce and add them to the mix at this point if you want. Careful with the Chipolte’s—they’re hot…

Stir everything up and let it simmer until the mixture is the consistency of “sloppy joes.” You want it wet, but not “dripping wet.”

When the mixture has reduced, you can either let it cool and place it in the fridge overnight, freeze it, or jump back to the beef tamale recipe and substitute “pork” every where you see “beef”.

Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

I'm Back From Mexico--Part II

(It’s all a state of Mind—or insanity)

Now there is chicken…

Whole chicken, cut into pieces—about four pounds (more birds if you got them and have a big enough pot, just multiply the other ingredients)

4 tbsp olive oil
1 yellow onion, sliced
6 cloves garlic, pealed
3 stalks of celery, sliced
4 carrots, sliced
3 tsp cumin
1 tsp allspice
2/4 tsp cayenne pepper

6 tsp powdered “herb ox” beef bouillon
10 cups hot water (enough water to cover your bird parts)

Once again, this is really simple to do. Take a big breath and don’t panic. All you need is one six or eight quart boiler.

Set the boiler on the stove top and turn the heat up to medium-low. Add your olive oil, the onions, celery, and carrots. Cook until the onions are clear and tender, then add the garlic and cook a few minutes.

Mix your bouillon powder with the hot water and let it sit on the side while you continue cooking.

Now turn the heat up to medium and add your bird parts and the water/beef bouillon mixture and stir every thing up. Turn down the heat to medium low, cover the pot, and step away from the oven.

Cook the bird until it starts to fall apart, at least two hours. When the meat is done to your satisfaction, pull it out on the side and let it cool. Let your stock cool separately, and spoon the fat off of the top.

By now you should have a bunch of Chicken (and pork if you followed the previous recipe) as well as some really fine stock, so let’s look at the possibilities…

Enjoy Y'all

The Redneck Gourmet

I'm Back From Mexico

(It’s all a state of Mind)

Cinco de Mayo has past now. As a result of our celebration of Mexican Independence Day, I’ve spent a LOT of time looking into “Mexican” cooking over the past couple of weeks. So much time that I think Pat is getting tired of Mexican.

That will never happen to me. As I’ve said earlier—I LOVE MEXICAN FOOD.

I’ve watched the Food Network shows on Mexican cooking and I have dreamed about black beans and tortillas. Here is the main thing that I have learned about cooking Mexican style. Mexican food is really simple—it’s just different from southern American food or Cajun food or Italian food or whatever.

The good news is, while it doesn’t have to cost much per portion served, it is hard to make just a little Mexican food for two. Seriously, Mexican seems to be best done in larger quantities, and some of it takes a good deal of time to do properly, so you don’t want to try to make just three tamales or one burrito or whatever.

Instead of cooking a single dish with a single meat, I’m starting to do my Mexican cooking in a process of cooking up one or two meats (pork, beef, or chicken), then making different dishes by further processing the basic meats as the filling ingredient for finished product.

What I’m going to do now is describe what I’ve been doing over the past few days to make the meat fillings for a couple of dishes, and the byproducts, some soup and other side dishes.

First there is pork…

Pork tenderloin—about one pound (more if you got it, just multiply the other ingredients)

2 tbsp olive oil
½ yellow onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, pealed
1 stalk celery, sliced
2 carrots, sliced
1 tsp cumin
¼ tsp allspice
¼ tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsp powdered “herb ox” beef bouillon
4 cups hot water (enough water to cover your pork tenderloin)

This is really simple to do, so don’t panic. All you need is one six quart boiler.

Set the boiler on the stove top and turn the heat up to medium-low. Add your olive oil, the onions, celery, and carrots. Cook until the onions are clear and tender, then add the garlic and cook a few minutes.

Mix your bouillon powder with the hot water and let it sit while you continue cooking.

Now turn the heat up to medium. Push the veggies to the side and toss your pork tenderloin in and sear it on all sides.

Once you have a nice “color” on the meat, add the water/beef bouillon mixture and stir every thing up. Turn down the heat to medium low, cover the pot, and step away from the oven.

Cook the pork until it starts to fall apart, about two hours. When the meat is done to your satisfaction, pull it out on the side and let it cool. Let your stock cool separately, and spoon the fat off of the top.

NOW, THE NEXT FEW POSTS WILL TALK ABOUT WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR PORK, AS WELL AS COOKING UP SOME OTHER MEATS FOR USE IN YOUR MEXICAN COOKING…


Black Bean and Corn Soup

I made this little dish up on my own, accidentally. I dumped a can of rinsed black beans and a small can of whole kernel corn into a boiler for the purpose of making a ‘vegetable medley” side dish, and ended up making soup after storing the mixture in the fridge for a couple of days.

(1) 15-1/4 ounce can of black beans, rinsed well
(1) 8-1/4 ounce can of whole kernel yellow corn
a few pieces of roasted red bell pepper
diced onion or scallions if you like
hot sauce to taste
a few twists of fresh black pepper
1 cup of liquid stock from the pork tenderloin mixture cooked as described above

If you try too hard, you can screw this recipe up. Otherwise, open the cans, throw everything in the pot, and cook it for an hour--longer if you have the time.

Eat the results, and shut up while I write up the other recipes...

Enjoy Y'all

The Redneck Gourmet

Beef Tamales

In anticipation of Cinco de Mayo, I’m declaring the next four weeks our official Unofficial Mexican Food Month here at the Redneck Gourmet. I can do this because 1) its my blog and 2) I really like Mexican cuisine.

When I was a kid, I had the opportunity to visit Mexico a couple of times with my parents on vacation. As a result, I learned to like Mexican food at an early age. Oddly enough, there was a pretty good Mexican restaurant in our little town in south Alabama in a time prior to the modern invasion of Mexican immigrants, both legal and illegal. Now you can’t turn a corner in most cities without finding a Mexican restaurant, but back then they were few and far between in the southeastern US.

One item was published on the menu at our local El Palacio Restaurant which was hardly ever available…

TAMALES.

For some reason their kitchen had trouble making tamales or they couldn’t get all of the ingredients or something—but for whatever reason they were only able to serve them about one out of ten times we dined there.

Maybe it was the psychological effect of being a scarce commodity or something else in addition to their wonderful texture and flavor, but for whatever reason, in my mind…

I absolutely love tamales.

I recently decided to learn how to make them, and it isn’t easy. But let me tell you, IT’S MOST DEFINITELY WORTH THE EFFORT!

This guy’s Website is the primary basis of my efforts this afternoon. To be fair, I also have to give this web site credit for explaining the process and linking me to other sites.

Having said all of that, as usual I’m going to change things to suit my own tastes and to make enough food for two people with a reasonable amount of leftovers (most published recipes make a zillion tamales.)

Tamales consist of a precooked meat filling, surrounded by a soft, ground corn shell made from something called Masa, which is traditionally steamed in a corn husk wrapper. The corn husks are a bit of a pain to work with and cost a little extra, but I found a good substitute—parchment paper. According to my reading, you can also use waxed paper, aluminum foil, or even paper coffee filters. The key is to wrap the assembled tamales in something to keep them together during the steaming process.

I have to admit that at first glance at the label on the bag of Masa is a little frightening. “Ground corn and lime” it says. Lime? Not limes like the green fruit called limes…I mean lime like the caustic chemical lime. I’m thinking to myself that I’m making tamales, not fertilizing the yard here, so what’s with the lime--you know?

Well, I’ll have to take their word for it. Apparently the lime is common in processing corn products like hominy corn and making mesa. Tastes OK to me, by the way.

Go figure.

So here is what you need to make eight large tamales:

(2) Cups masa
(2) Tbsp corn oil
1-1/8 cup water
(1) Tsp baking powder
(1) Tsp salt

For the filling:

¾ lb beef brisket or London broil
1/8 cup olive oil
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
Fresh-ground black pepper

(2) Tbsp lard
½ medium onion sliced thin
(4) Cloves garlic, pealed and smashed flat
(10) Black peppercorns
(1) Can of beef stock
(2) Cups of water

½ tbsp cumin
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
(1) 7oz can Chipotle Peppers in Adobo sauce

First things first. Rinse off your piece of beef and pat dry with a clean dishtowel or paper towels. Take a large meat fork and stab the beef on both sides about twenty or thirty times to make room for the marinade to soak in.

Don’t hurt yourself in the process.

Slice the slab into 1” wide strips, toss the strips into a large zip lock bag, and pour the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and black pepper inside. Press the air out of the bag and zip it closed, then massage the liquid to mix with and saturate your beef. Toss it on the kitchen counter and get the rest of your tools and ingredients ready to work with. The meat needs to marinade for at least a half hour. I let mine go a full hour. Pick up the bag every fifteen minutes and squeeze everything around to ensure that the beef and marinade is mixed real good.

To make your tamales, you are going to need a 6 quart boiler with lid, a four quart boiler with steamer basket and lid, and a large cast iron skillet.

After the meat has been marinated, place the 6 quart boiler over medium heat and toss in the beef to sear and brown on the outside. Once browned, melt the lard, then add the can of beef stock, two cups of water, the onions, garlic, peppercorns, cumin, and cayenne pepper. Bring everything to a low boil, add the cover, and cook for a couple of hours until the meat is tender and starts to fall apart. By now the liquid should have reduced by about 1/3rd. Turn off the heat and let things cool a bit.

Once the meat has cooked, pick out the larger chunks and reserve in a bowl on the side. Pour the contents of the boiler through a colander, reserving the liquid. Pick through the colander for chunks of meat you missed, and then discard the onions and garlic.

Heat the cast iron skillet over medium heat. Shred your beef into the skillet and combine with the cumin and cayenne pepper. Add the Chipotle peppers is you like (be very careful because they are spicy HOT!) As the meat starts to sizzle, pour in a little of the reserved liquid (I used about a cup.) Cook while stirring until you have a mixture about the consistency of “sloppy Joes.” Now turn off the heat again.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the Masa with the baking powder and salt and stir well. Now add the corn oil and start adding the water a little at a time as you stir the mixture with a wooden spoon. You want to make a very stiff mixture that is slightly moist but still holds together when you press it out flat in your hand.

Put about an inch of water in your boiler and set it with the steamer basket on the stove over medium heat.

Now cut your parchment paper (mine was 12”x16” sheets) into 6”x8” rectangles. Spoon out enough of your Masa mixture to cover 4”x6” of that area. I pressed my mixture out with my hand onto the parchment, then covered it with another sheet of parchment and pressed until I got a slab about 3/16” thick. To make it a proper rectangle, tear off pieces as you work and press them where you need them, then take a knife and cut the edges nice and smooth.

This isn’t geometry class, so fool with your Masa until you are happy, then spoon out about three big teaspoons full of your meat mixture in the center. Roll the finished tamale up across in the narrow direction of the paper and then fold the two ends over once. Believe it or not, I STAPLED the paper wrappers on my tamales closed like Steve did over at Hog On Ice.

You’re in the home stretch now so stay with me here. Place your finished tamales in the steamer basket standing upright. If your basket isn’t tall enough (like mine was,) place them at least at a 45 degree angle, supported by a small juice glass or other support. Place the lid on the steamer basket, tilted slightly open to let steam escape.

Now let the tamales steam for at least 45 minutes. Step away from the stove and give yourself a nice round of applause. Mix yourself a margarita if you like. I actually made beef enchaladas, spicy mexican corn, and stuffed colored bell peppers along with my tamales, so look for more recipes later this month as I work out the details.

Serve your tamales by placing them on the plate and unwrapping them, watching out that you don't burn your fingers if they just came out of the steamer basket. Place a little salsa or adobo sauce on the side, pour a fresh margarita, and EAT!

Enjoy Y'all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Funky Southwestern Chicken & Beef a la Europe

(OK you make up a name if you can do better)

Today was another lazy day on St. Simons. Beautiful weather, but with a high in the mid sixty degree range and a moderate breeze it was too cool for the pool or beach. I didn’t set foot near a grocery store, for a change, so I worked out of the fridge and the pantry to prepare dinner tonight.

This recipe is entirely of my own making so I take total responsibility if you don’t like the outcome. I call it Funky Southwestern Chicken and Beef because the presentation on the plate looks like a dish from the southwest with the cornhusks lying under the portions, but the seasoning is definitely not Tex-Mex. Pat and I were impressed with the results.

Here is what you will need to make dinner for two:

One small beef tenderloin
One boneless, skinless chicken breast

Two ears of fresh yellow corn in the husk

Three medium Yukon gold potatoes

One package Knorr Chicken gravy

Worcestershire sauce
Dried Thyme
Dried Rosemary
Paprika
Cayenne pepper
Fresh ground black pepper
¼ stick of butter
¼ slab of cream cheese
Half & half

The preparation:

Peal the outer leaves of the corn husk off of each ear of corn, leaving three or four layers of husk intact and wrap the corn in aluminum foil. Place the corn in a 350 degree oven for about one hour.

Rinse off your chicken and beef and pat dry. (You can use all chicken or all beef if you wish for the recipe.) Place the pieces of meat in a bowl and pour about a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce over each piece. Now sprinkle each with a little Thyme, Rosemary, Paprika, and Cayenne Pepper. Let everything marinade for 20 minutes or so.

Scrub your potatoes and cut them into even pieces about 1” thick. The reason you cut them evenly is to ensure that everything cooks and gets done together. Place them on the stove in a medium boiler with enough cold water to cover, plus about ½”. Wait until you place your meat in the oven before you kick on the heat on the potatoes.

After the corn has cooked for about forty minutes, spray a medium baking dish with Pam spray and place the meat in the dish in the oven beside the pieces of corn.

Turn on the eye on the stovetop under the potatoes to medium and bring them to a low boil.

Prepare your gravy according to the package instructions, except add a few sprinkles of Thyme and Rosemary, then keep it warm on the side.

After the corn has cooked for an hour, remove it from the oven and leave it in the foil to stay warm on the side. Turn the broiler on to 450 degrees and ensure that your dish containing the meat is in the center of the rack. Let it keep cooking for another ten minutes or so.

Check your potatoes and when they are “fork tender,” turn off the heat and let them coast.

Now take the meat out of the oven and turn off your broiler. Toss your plates (oven proof, of course) into the oven to pre-heat.

Strain up your potatoes in a colander and place the drained chunks, skin and all, into a medium mixing bowl. Add the butter, the cream cheese, a few splashes of half and half, and a few twists of pepper and mash everything up with a wooden spoon. Leave the potatoes a little chunky if you like.

Unwrap the corn and peal the husk off the ears, reserving three or four sections of husk from each ear for garnish on your plates. Cut the corn off the cob with a sharp knife and toss the kernels in a bowl with a little olive oil and butter. Add a few twists of pepper.

Slice the meat into thin slices, then remove the plates from the oven and place them on chargers. Arrange the corn husks on each plate in a “fan” shape, then spoon half of the mashed potatoes into a nice pile at the base of the fan on each plate. Spoon the corn around the edge of the potatoes and arrange the sliced meat around the outside edge of the fan.

Drizzle hot gravy over the potatoes and meat, toss the plates on the table, and EAT!

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Pasta Machine

If you are considering buying one--Don't.

If you already have one, buy a rope or chain, take it to the lake or ocean, and use it for a boat anchor...

More later

PiZZa!!

I love good pizza. Not just any pizza, I want good pizza.

Truly good pizza is hard to find. You have to drive to New York City, Chicago, or obscure places like Sidestreet Pizza in Tryon, North Carolina if you want to eat a good pizza pie. There is also a place in the Atlanta suburbs called New York Pizza Exchange that makes an excellent pizza and saved us a few round trips on Delta Airlines to get pizza when we lived in nearby Vinings, Georgia.

If you have never had what I consider to be good pizza, you are missing a real culinary treat. This means that if you eat pizza you are probably happy having Pizza Hut, Dominoes, or Pappa John’s deliver some mishy-mash of cheese stuffed crust with cinnamon sticks and a large bottle of flat soda to your door for $13.98 (such a deal) with a coupon. Every time I try this approach, I swear to myself that I’ll never do it again.

My other home pizza solution has been to modify a store bought frozen pizza like those produced by the DiGiorno division of Kraft Foods. You may have done this drill yourself—take a basic three meat thick crust pizza, toss on some extra mozzarella cheese, black olives, sliced mushrooms, artichoke hearts, and feta cheese, and pop it in the oven.

The result? OK Pizza. Not good…just OK.

I’ve recently solved my pizza cravings because I’ve learned how to make my own pizza crust. While the crust takes a while, the toppings are a no-brainer. The guys and gals over at The Artisan.net gave me all I needed to know about making pizza dough and I’ve done it twice in the past week and believe me when I tell you that this recipe works.

It’s not something that you can do in thirty minutes after you get home from work and the kids are screaming, but you can do it on a Saturday afternoon when you have the time to let the dough rise.

I said LET THE DOUGH RISE. The first time I made the recipe I was hard headed and rushed the process, didn’t let the dough rise fully, and used all of the dough to make one really fat, 2” thick crust 14” pizza. The dough tasted fine, but it was way too much crust for a single pizza.

This afternoon I took my time, let the dough rise properly, and made two thick crust 13” pizzas. Mama Mia…It Worked—I can hardly believe that I made these pizzas.

Here is what I did:

For the Dough Starter—

¾ cup plain flour (not self rising)
¼ cup warm water
1 pack of fast acting yeast


For the main dough—

2-1/4 cups plain flour
1 cup room temperature water
1 tsp salt

For the Tomato Sauce (enough for two pizzas)—

(1) 8 oz can Hunts No Salt Tomato Sauce
(1) 6 oz can tomato paste
½ can Beef broth
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried turmeric
A couple twists of fresh ground black pepper


Toppings—Take your pick, you know what you like…I used

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Sliced pepperoni
Spicy Italian Saussage
Sliced black olives
Sliced button mushrooms
Marinated artichoke hearts, sliced
Sun dried tomatoes
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Crumbled Feta cheese


Making the dough—

Just like the web site I referenced says, making the dough is a two part process.

First you make the starter by combining the warm water and the yeast in a small glass measuring cup. Stir the mixture up and let it set for ten minutes. This activates the little yeast beasties and gives them a chance to stretch their legs and get ready to do some work for you.

Once you have a ¼ cup of hungry yeast, howling for something to eat, pour your water yeast mixture into a small mixing bowl containing ¾ cup of flour. Take a wooden spoon and stir everything up until the dough starts to pull away from the walls of the bowl. Knead the dough a little with your fingers, shape into a ball, and then cover the dough with a clean dishtowel and let it rise for thirty to forty-five minutes. Fix yourself a drink and get the rest of your ingredients ready. Watch a little TV if you want.

When you starter has risen, add your 1 cup of water into your starter and stir it all up to dilute. In a large mixing bowl combine the 2-1/4 cups of flour and the 1 tsp salt and mix thoroughly. Now add your starter/water mixture to your flour/salt mixture and mix it all together with a wooden spoon or, if you’re brave like me, with your bare hands.

Redneck Tip: Wash your hands, then dry them and pour a teaspoon of olive oil into one hand and oil your hands before working with the flour. This will cause the dough to not stick as badly.

Keep working your dough until it starts pulling away from the sides of the bowl. Lightly dust the clean countertop or a large cutting board with flour, then turn out your blob of dough and knead it for a few minutes. I’m not going to try to tell you exactly how to knead dough here, it’s not rocket science, but it is important to work your dough to mix the ingredients but not over work it—else it will be tough. As I’ve said earlier, practice makes perfect.

Now divide your dough into two even balls, cover them with clean dishtowels, and allow them to rise from 1-1/2 to 2 hours. The dough should double in size, so you can adjust your “rise” time based on what your eyeballs tell you.

While you are waiting, make your sauce by combining the tomato sauce, tomato paste, beef broth, and spices in a small boiler over low heat. Heat until you want to use some, but don’t boil.

When you are close to having the dough ready, kick the heat on your oven up to 500 degrees F. The web site says use a pizza stone. Sorry folks, but I don’t have one…YET. I’m going to get one, but in the mean time I use a vented aluminum pizza pan. The idea here is to allow the bottom of the crust to cook well and become crispy. The pan works pretty well in my opinion, but I am going to go buy a pizza stone shortly.

When your dough has adequately risen, uncover it, move it to the side, and re-flour your work surface. Now place your dough in the center of the work area and fold the dough back onto itself from four directions, trying to maintain a round shape. Now kneed the dough gently and work it out with your hands (or use a rolling pin) into a 13” or 14” round shape, maintaining a thicker rim and a thin middle section.

I actually picked my crust up and worked it with my knuckles in the air like the pizza guys do on TV. If you tear a little hole in it, just place it back on the work surface and pinch the hole closed. When you are happy with your crust or afraid to mess with it further, place it on your pan (or stone.)

Now this step is important. Drizzle a little olive oil over the center of the crust, omitting the outside edges if you want them crispy. Smear the oil around with a spoon or your fingers to evenly coat the crust. This oil is important in order to keep the tomato sauce and other juices from soaking into your crust while it cooks.

Now smear four or five tablespoons of tomato sauce over the center of your crust. Use a large wooden spoon to evenly spread the sauce over the area—not too thick. I like to cook my pizza with a thin coating of sauce and place extra sauce on the side on the table.

Sprinkle a layer of Mozzarella cheese over the sauce, add your other ingredients, and another layer of cheese if you want.

Now you are on the downhill stretch. Toss your pizza in the oven, pour yourself a glass of wine, and do a few dishes while it cooks. My oven takes about 20 minutes at 500 degrees.

Pull the pizza out and place on a cutting board, place your extra sauce in a bowl on the table, slice your pizza, toss it on plates, top of the wine glasses, and EAT!

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Pork Pasta Primavera

(with vegetables)

I love being able to toss things together on the spur of the moment. Pat’s heading back to Chicago this morning and we have a fridge full of extra “stuff” I’ve bought as a result of having her working from home the past few weeks.

Before we wandered out to the pool yesterday afternoon (yes—we’re already working on our sun tans in April here on St. Simons,) I browsed through the freezer and the pantry and here is what I came up with for dinner for two.

The ingredients:

1 medium pork tenderloin (1/3 to 1/2 lb?)

1 cup of frozen English peas
1 crown of broccoli
1 chunk of cauliflower
1 medium carrot, sliced
8 oz colored Rotini pasta

For the Primavera Sauce

¼ stick semi sweat unsalted butter
¼ cup heavy cream
1 egg yolk
1 clove garlic, crushed and diced very, very fine
A few twists of fresh ground black pepper
A few sprigs of fresh parsley, chopped fine
¾ cup grated fresh Pecorino Romano Locatelli Cheese (Parmesan will also do)

The process:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Redneck Tip: Be very careful with your use of salt in everything as the cheese is VERY salty in the Primavera Sauce.

Rinse the pork tenderloin and pat dry with a dishtowel or paper towel. Marinade the pork in a little balsamic vinegar or Worcestershire sauce or whatever, seasoning with pepper (no salt.)

While your pork is swimming, chop the broccoli and cauliflower into small pieces and toss the pieces along with the peas into your steamer basket over an inch of water in a boiler on the stovetop. Kick the heat up to medium.

Place a four quart boiler with two quarts of water for the pasta on the stovetop over medium heat, adding a DASH of salt and a little butter or olive oil.

When your oven is up to temperature, place the pork tenderloin in a greased dish in the oven and cook until the meat is 160 degrees F.

Redneck Tip: Use a meat thermometer, not your finger or tongue, to determine the temperature of the Pork….Duuuhhh.

Melt half the butter for the Primavera Sauce in a two quart boiler over medium low heat.

When your Pork reaches 140 degrees F and your water is boiling, put your Rotini pasta in the boiler and cook about 8 minutes or until al dente.

Redneck Tip: Al Dente is Italian for “how you like it”—no actually it means “to the tooth” i.e. firm, not soft or mushy.

Meanwhile, back with the sauce, after the butter has melted, stir in the cream and egg yolk, and whisk for another minute. Now add the garlic and cheese and keep stirring until the cheese melts.

Turn off the heat and whisk in the butter and parsley and add a few twists of fresh pepper. Take the boiler off of the eye and keep stirring so that it doesn’t overheat.

Turn off the heat on the pasta and vegetables and pull your pork out of the oven and let it rest. Put a couple of pasta bowls into the oven to preheat

Strain up the pasta and toss with a little olive oil. Now add the vegetables to the pasta and toss with your Primavera sauce.

Slice the pork tenderloin into thin slices and serve on top of the pasta vegetable mixture.

Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Salsa

(More fun with the food processor)

I love salsa, but in my opinion, it is not worth the price you pay for it in the grocery store. I break down and buy some every now and then, but I find that making my own Salsa is easy, fun, and very cost effective—especially since I got my food processor.

I’ve made three kinds of salsa in the past two weeks. Actually, two kinds—I just left the garlic out of part of one to satisfy my girl Pat’s taste buds.

Basically, salsa consists of a variety of things found on the fruit and vegetable isle of the grocery store, all ground up and seasoned with some spices and a little vinegar. For instance, there is…

Plain Salsa:

Into the food processor toss the following:

Two medium tomatoes, cut into large cubes (seeded if you want to)
One seeded jalapeno pepper (or leave the seeds in if you want more “heat”)
One quarter medium onion, cubed.
As much garlic as you can stand—at least one clove (I like two or three)
A few sprigs of fresh Cilantro
Two or three table spoons of white vinegar
Salt to taste
A couple of twists on the old pepper mill.


Start out with the seasonings and the onion and garlic so that it will spread out and not end up as a few large mind blowing chunks in someone’s mouth. Place the garlic, salt, pepper, vinegar, and jalapeno pepper in the basin of your food processor and grind on high speed until you get a fine paste. Now scrape down the walls of the basin.

Now throw in the tomatoes and cilantro and press the “Pulse button” on the food processor until everything is cut up to the consistency you want.

If you want chunky salsa for use on tacos, burritos, or as a side on a plate of Mexican food, then make it chunky by going easy on the pulse button.

If, however, you prefer that thin, watery stuff that they throw in front of you with tortilla chips when you sit down at the local “Casa de Pedro Cantina” or wherever you go to get your fix of Mexican food, then turn the food processor on high and go take a shower.

When you get back you’ll have thin, watery salsa that tastes exactly the same but has no texture and character. I happen to like texture in my salsa.

A trick I’ve learned is to put part (two thirds or so) of your major ingredients including all of the spices and seasonings into the basin of the food processor, chop it all up fairly fine, then throw in the rest of the tomatoes, peppers, or whatever you are using and then carefully hit the pulse button a few more times. This way you get a variable consistency including a flavorful base of flavor to please your taste buds and tongue, with larger chunks included to give your molars something to do. I like to get my entire mouth involved with my cooking.

Next we have Tomatillo Salsa:

Tomatillos look like a small green tomato in a brown paper wrapper. They are a relative of the tomato, but have a tart flavor with a little ‘bite” like a mild pepper.

The local grocer has a Tomatillo salsa that they sell for about four dollars. I love it, but I think that I can figure out how to make it myself. Here is what I did…

Six two inch Tomatillos, with the brown wrapper removed
One quarter of a medium onion
One or Two seeded jalapeno peppers (or leave the seeds in if you want more “heat”)
As much garlic as you can stand—at least one clove (I like two or three)
A few sprigs of fresh Cilantro
Two or three table spoons of white vinegar
Salt to taste
A couple of twists on the old pepper mill.

Again, put the onion, garlic, vinegar, and spices into your basin and puree to a paste. Scrape down the sides of the basin, then add four or five of the Tomatillos (and some more onion if you want) and pulse the food processor to you get the consistency you want.

Now do another cycle by adding the last Tomatillo(s) (and yet more onion—ummm, ummm, good) and pulse until it looks right.

As always, I suggest that you TASTE WHAT YOU JUST MADE. So, TASTE YOUR SALSA.

Does it need anything? More salt? A little more vinegar?

Then add it, then place your salsa in a bowl and toss it in the fridge for an hour or so.

When you get ready to watch “the big game” or the NASCAR race, grab yourself some chips and then EAT!

Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Food Processor!

(And Asian Coleslaw)

There are some things in life that I have resisted owning, often times for good reason. Even if my bank account was bulging at the seams, I’ve generally resisted certain extravagances in favor of working my way up through the learning curve in an effort to truly understand the fundamental concepts of a given endeavor.

I once bought a $700 water ski, even though I had only owned a boat capable of pulling a skier for about a year. That exercise turned out OK because in water skiing, cost equates with quality and performance and I advanced a lot faster in my slalom skiing efforts as a result of owning my fancy ski.

I’ve done all of my cooking to date using a chef’s knife and a few inexpensive smaller knives for chopping, dicing, paring, julienne, and otherwise mutilating my cooking ingredients. I literally spent hours last spring chopping up cabbage and other vegetables to make large quantities of three types of slaw to take to a single cookout.

I believe that I know how to use a chef's knife and it has been my primary tool in prep work for years. Not anymore, because my mother gave me a food processor last weekend.

I love it.

Unless someone stops me, I’m just libel to grind up everything in Glynn County Georgia in the next few weeks. Last night I made a version of coleslaw that I found in an old issue of Bon Appetit magazine.

Here is what you need:

½ head green cabbage
¼ head red cabbage
1 carrot
¼ large red bell pepper
¼ large yellow bell pepper
3 green onions

For the Dressing:

4 tbsp rice vinegar
4 tbsp peanut oil
3 tbsp creamy peanut butter
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp golden brown sugar
1 tbsp minced pealed fresh gingerroot
¾ tbsp minced garlic

Whisk the dressing ingredients together in a small mixing bowl and let stand covered at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Now break out that gleaming new food processor and get going making small pieces out of large pieces. Slice the cabbage and bell peppers down to pieces that will fit in your food processor “chute.”

Run the vegetables through the food processor according to the manufacturers’ instructions. When the container gets full, dump the contents out into a large mixing bowl to make more room. Once everything is chopped up, reach in the mixing bowl with your hands and mix everything up nice and evenly.

Redneck Tip: Wash your hands, fool.

Now drizzle your dressing over the vegetables and toss everything again to coat evenly. Place in the refrigerator to chill. While your slaw is chilling, cook a burger or a hotdog or fry up some chicken, break out your slaw, and EAT!

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Lentil and Pasta Soup

I found myself hungry and in a hurry the other night. As usual, I started poking around my pantry and I came across a package of dried lentils I had bought on sale several months ago.

Being from the south, I have to admit that Lentils are a bit foreign to me. Pinto beans, black eyed peas, butter beans and butter peas, crowder peas—I love every form of legume including the peanut, but I’ve only eaten lentils maybe a half dozen times in my entire life. All I had ever heard of was lentil soup, so I made some. It was easy

¼ to ½ of an onion, diced fine
2 cloves garlic, diced very fine
1 carrot, pealed and diced fine
1 stalk of celery, diced fine
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
½ tsp paprika
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
1 can beef stock
1 can chicken stock
2-3 cups hot water (you be the judge—got company coming over?)
1 cup (about ½ package) dried lentils
½ cup orzo pasta

Heat the olive oil in a four quart boiler over medium low heat. Add the onion and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the carrot and celery and keep stirring. Now add the garlic and cook until the onions are clear.

Toss in the thyme, the bay leaf, the spices, the beef stock and the chicken stock and turn up the heat to medium. Cook everything for another ten minutes or so until it reaches a low simmer. Now add the lentils and 2 cups of water. Stir it all up, bring it back to a simmer and cover with a lid.

Cook for thirty minutes, stirring occasionally and adjusting the heat so that the mixture doesn’t boil.

When the lentils are tender, add the Orzo pasta and let it all cook for another fifteen minutes. Add a little more water or stock if things get too thick. Taste your soup and add a little kosher salt if you want.

Turn down the heat, ladle out some soup into a bowl, grab some soda crackers, and EAT.

Enjoy Ya’ll

The Redneck Gourmet

Cheese Stuffed Shells With Tomato Meat Sauce

I’ve been cooking variations on this dish for about eight years now. The original recipe came off of the Muellers Pasta Manicotti box. When I first started cooking it I was quite intimidated by the concepts involved because I was early in my cooking career, but it is really not that hard to make—it just takes a little time and the results are definitely worth the efforts.

Last night I threw together a variation on my standard tomato sauce by tossing in some ground beef and Italian sausage. You can use the hollow tubular Manicotti shells or the Jumbo Shells that look like seashells. Either one yields basically the same dish, but the Jumbo Shells are easier to stuff. Here is what you will need…

Tomato Meat Sauce:

1 tsp extra virgin expeller pressed olive oil
½ medium onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, diced fine
(1) 28 oz can petite diced tomatoes
(1) 14.5 oz can pureed tomatoes
(1) Can beef stock
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp dried parsley
½ tbsp dried basil
½ tsp fresh ground black pepper
¼ tsp paprika

½ lb lean ground chuck
1 link Italian sausage

For the Stuffing:

2 eggs, lightly beaten
One 8 oz package Mozzarella cheese
Two 15 oz packages Ricotta Cheese
½ cup fresh grated parmesan cheese
½ cup chopped parsley

Topping:

One 8 oz package mozzarella cheese


Start the sauce first. Pour the olive oil into the bottom of a six quart boiler over medium low heat. Dice your onion and toss it in the oil and cook for a few minutes, then throw in you garlic and cook until the onions are clear.

Add the canned tomatoes to the onions and garlic, then add the beef stock and stir it all up. Next add the spices and bring everything to a low simmer and cook for a half hour, stirring every now and then.

While your sauce is simmering, lightly brown your ground beef and sausage in a medium skillet. Drain off any grease that cooks out of the meat.

Meanwhile, in a medium mixing bowl, combine the ricotta cheese, the mozzarella cheese, the parsley, the beaten eggs, and the spices. Stir everything up to mix well and place it in the refrigerator to chill.

After the sauce has cooked for a half hour or so, add the browned meat and stir it all up. Keep cooking at a low simmer.

After the sauce has cooked and reduced for a while, place a six quart boiler on the stove and fill with four quarts of salted water. Add a splash of olive oil. Bring the water to a boil and add your pasta (shells or manicotti.) Cook according to the package instructions, about 14 or 15 minutes. Don’t get all excited and stir the pasta too much because you will tear these big old shells if you are not careful.

Drain the shells through a colander, and toss them with a little olive oil, again being careful to not tear them up while handling them. Now set them aside to let them cool.

Turn off the heat on the sauce and preheat your oven to 350 degrees F, get out a 9” x 13” Pyrex baking dish, and grease the inside of the dish. Now, while the oven is preheating, stuff your shells with the cheese mixture. Wash your hands and don’t be afraid to get the mixture on you while you work with it. For the Manicotti, I find that you can use the handle end of a butter knife as a “plunger” to push the cheese mixture into the shell from each end. Work over the bowl and keep stuffing until some of the mixture comes back out the other end.

The jumbo shells are easier to stuff because you can just spread them open with your thumb and fingers and spoon the stuffing into each shell. Place your stuffed pasta in uniform rows in the bottom of the baking dish. I usually get five shells side by side in about five or six rows. Don’t worry about using all of your shells—just stuff the number that you need to fill the bottom of the baking dish.

Now evenly spoon the tomato meat sauce over the stuffed shells to cover, sprinkle the mozzarella cheese on top, and pop the dish in the oven to cook for 30 minutes.

Step back from the stove and give yourself a nice round of applause. Now rinse off your pots and pans and load the dishwasher while you drink a glass of wine in anticipation of dinner.

When the shells are done, pull the dish out of the oven and allow it to cool for ten or fifteen minutes. Place a couple of large pasta bowls in the oven to warm.

With a large spatula, cut and lift out two or three stuffed shells and some sauce and place in the center of the pasta bowls. Grate some fresh parmesan cheese on top, grab a fork and napkin, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Genuine Imitation Chicken Curry

I cooked some really good Indian Curry a couple of years ago and promptly lost the recipe. It might be on our other notebook computer, but I was too lazy to fire it up and take a look.

Any way, it came out pretty well (the curry, not the computer) and watching Jamie Oliver, “The Naked Chef on Food Network last night brought my desire for Curry rushing back to me.

Take a gander at what Jamie did, but don’t get all impressed because I couldn’t find half of the ingredients here on our little island necessary to make his Curry. What I did do is sorta make up my own “Genuine Imitation” Curry tonight, and it came out yummy.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp extra virgin expeller pressed olive oil
½ tbsp mustard seeds
2 cloves garlic, diced
¼ cup fresh ginger, pealed and diced (ok, ok, as much fresh ginger as you want)
½ medium yellow onion, coarsely chopped
½ medium red bell pepper, julienned
½ medium yellow bell pepper, julienned

¼ tsp turmeric
1/8 tsp chili powder (optional, be very, very careful--you don’t hurt your self)
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
2 cups hot water
1 14 oz can coconut milk
½ tbsp green curry paste
1 bunch green onions (scallions for all you Yankees)
Salt to taste

2 boneless chicken breasts
2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup of rice per person

You need three pots to do this recipe--A 6 quart boiler for the curry, a 2 to 4 quart boiler (depending on the quantity) for the rice, and a large heavy skillet to stir-fry the chicken in.

Toss all three vessels on the stove and put 2 tbsp of olive oil in the skillet and the same amount in the large boiler. Turn the heat on the large boiler up to medium and leave the skillet cold for now.

While your oil is heating, dice your garlic, onion, ginger, and julienne your bell peppers.

After your oil has heated in the boiler, toss in the mustard seeds and let them toast. As they start to pop like popcorn, toss in your onion and turn down the heat slightly while stirring. Cook everything for a couple of minutes, then toss in the ginger and the garlic and keep stirring for a few minutes.

Now add your bell pepper. Keep stirring until the onions are clear.

Add your canned diced tomatoes, the coconut milk, two cups of water, and bring everything to a low simmer. Add the green curry paste and the green onions. Stir.

Cook for about ten minutes, then taste your curry and carefully add your salt.

While the curry is simmering, go slice your chicken breasts into ½ inch strips, then cut the strips in half. Place them in a bowl and squeeze the juice of ½ lemon over the pieces, then drizzle lightly with olive oil. Let the chicken stand for twenty or thirty minutes.

After the chicken has marinaded, preheat your skillet and the 2 tsp of olive oil on medium low heat, then add your chicken and stir-fry until it is lightly done (pink in the middle.)

Add the chicken pieces to the curry, stir it all up, reduce the heat to low, cover the pot with a lid, and let everything cook for another half hour or so.

Cook your rice according to the package instructions and keep covered to stay warm.

Put your bowls in the oven to warm.

Check back by and stir the curry mixture every ten minutes to ensure that it isn’t burning or sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Put the heated bowls on chargers, add some rice, spoon the curry over the top, grab a napkin, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Late Night Boiled Shrimp Salad

My girl Pat’s travel schedule has recently changed and she gets to come home on Thursday nights rather than leaving Chicago’s O’Hare airport on a 6:00 AM flight on Friday mornings. The only problem is that she doesn’t get home until about 11:30 PM and she doesn’t have time to eat dinner making the connections to St.Simons.

Last night I was tasked with making her something to eat that was rather light in nature and easy for me to put together.

My standard solution…SHRIMP!

Luckily, we keep a couple of pounds of frozen shrimp in our freezer at all times and we have a pretty well stocked fridge and pantry, so here is what I came up with…

Salad:

A couple of dozen 35-55 count frozen (or fresh) shrimp
½ tbsp Old bay seasoning
¼ tsp Red pepper flakes
Baby field greens (or salad greens of your choice)
One can of pear halves
One can of mandarin orange slices
Ricotta cheese (or cottage cheese if you like)

Dressing:

1/8 cup Good balsamic vinegar (16 year old if you got it)
Extra virgin expeller pressed olive oil
Black pepper to taste

Cocktail sauce:

½ cup catsup
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
Juice of ½ lemon
2 tbsp prepared horseradish (or to your taste)
Black pepper to taste

First, toss a couple of bowls into the freezer to chill.

Set a medium boiler with a couple quarts of water on the stove to boil. Season the water with the Old Bay Seasoning and red pepper flakes.

While your water is coming to a boil, make up your dressing and cocktail sauce.

For the dressing, whisk together the balsamic vinegar with the olive oil—a little at a time—until you have a good emulsion. Add the olive oil SLOWLY and whisk rapidly (without getting it on your shirt or the ceiling) until it is sort of foamy. You got it?

The cocktail sauce is easy—catsup in a small mixing bowl, then the Worcestershire, lemon juice, horseradish and pepper. Stir it up.

By now the water should be boiling, so toss your shrimp into the water along with the leftover lemon halves after you have juiced them.

While the shrimp are boiling, let’s jump over to the salad.

Pull the salad bowls out of the freezer and put a couple of hands full of greens in each bowl. Place the mandarin oranges and pear halves around the edge of the salad and drizzle the dressing evenly over the plate. Place a scoop of ricotta cheese in each pear slice (I like lots of cheese.)

Don’t let your shrimp boil longer than three to five minutes or they will get tough. Drain the shrimp and toss them into a bowl of ice cubes to stop the cooking and chill slightly.

Now pour yourself a glass of wine and rest for a minute while your shrimp chill.

Divide the shrimp evenly (OK, OK, I actually get more shrimp than Pat) in the center of the salad plates, top off your wine glass, put everything on the table with the cocktail sauce, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man

I have been following the blogging and cooking adventures of Steve over at Hog on Ice for a couple of months. In addition to being a good cook, Steve is hilarious.

Currently working on his second cookbook, his first book Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man is even making him a little cash to pay for his blogging and eating habits.

Steve says: “Live Fat, die young, and leave a really big corpse.” I LIKE IT! Steve and I are men of the same (clogged) vein when it comes to cooking.

Then there is this news story: Southern Food Frustrates Health Officials.

“DECATUR, Ga. Feb 13, 2005 — When Becky Cleaveland is out with her girlfriends, they all pick at salads except for the petite Atlanta woman. She tackles "The Hamdog."

The dish, a specialty of Mulligan's, a suburban bar, is a hot dog wrapped by a beef patty that's deep fried, covered with chili, cheese and onions and served on a hoagie bun. Oh yeah, it's also topped with a fried egg and two fistfuls of fries.”

I love it, a hot dog weiner wrapped in a beef patty, etc., etc.

I am happy as hell that Southern food still frustrates the bed wetting liberal-know-it-alls over at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. If I listened to them, when it comes to cooking, I would have to leave out a very important ingredient…

Flavor!

And I just can’t do that, no matter what my waist size expands to..

Horseradish Crusted Pork Tenderloin

I have a love hate relationship with Walmart. In spite of my fear and loathing of giant retail spaces full of people that generally look and act like the audience from The Jerry Springer Show, I still find myself compelled to make at least one monthly trek from our little island, across the Torres causeway, to mainland Georgia, grocery list in hand, to shop at our local Walmart.

In addition to truck loads of paper towels, toilet paper, and cases of bottled water, we also find that Walmart carries a very nice whole pork tenderloin. Not one of those tiny tenderloins which is actually two smaller pieces strapped side by side in the plastic wrapper mind you.

Noooooo, I mean a real MAN’S pork tenderloin—about 3” by 5” x 16” long. I like to buy one every so often and I slice it into nice fat 1” chunks to cook as boneless pork chops. I also cut a couple of thicker slices (2” or 3”) to cook like a small pork roast. Our freezer happily contains a half dozen slabs of pork tenderloin as I write this piece.

Here is what I did with our pork tenderloin last night.

Ingredients:

1 pound slab of pork tenderloin

1 cup unseasoned bread crumbs
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt to taste
¼ tsp fresh ground black pepper

4 tbsp prepared horseradish, drained

3 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp mayo


Trim the extra fat and muscle “sheath” off of the tenderloin. Rinse and pat dry.

Toast the bread crumbs in the olive oil in a skillet over medium low heat until lightly browned.

In a mixing bowl, combine the horseradish, the salt, the pepper, and the browned bread crumbs. Mix well.

In a small mixing bowl stir together the mustard and the mayo. Now place the tenderloin in a small, greased ( I use Pam Olive oil spray) baking dish. Smear the mustard/mayo mixture evenly over the entire surface of the pork.

Now comes the fun part. Scoop out the toasted bread crumb/horseradish mixture with your hands and pat it onto the outside of the pork. Keep working it until the entire thing is covered. If some falls off into the baking dish, don’t worry, just scoop it up and press it back on.

When you are happy with your crummy pig part, place it in a 450 degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes.

Pull it out of the oven and let your pig rest for ten minutes or so, then carefully slice into ¼” to 1/2" thick slices.

Serve with your favorite pasta or some vegetables.


Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Killer Cornbread For Two (Or A Few)

I think that everybody has a cornbread recipe. The problem for me is, the average recipe makes enough cornbread for as family of twenty (ok, family of eight.) I love cornbread, but I only want to eat it one or two days in a row and not have to throw half of it away.

Also, I find that cornbread is somewhat “sensitive” to the proportion of ingredients you put in it. Every day for me has been a new adventure since historically I only cook cornbread once every few months.

I’ve recently solved that problem by cooking four “pones” of cornbread in the past two weeks. Three of the four came out of my little Lodge 6-1/2” diameter cast iron skillet perfectly. The fourth one that I cooked last night decided to stick a little and tore the “crust” off of half of the bottom of it in front of my dinner guests. Oh well…

Any way, here is what you need to do to make cornbread for a few (or one really hungry guy…)

1/2 cup cornmeal
1/3 cup all purpose flour
3/4 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tbsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 can creamed corn
milk—as much as you need—about ¼ of a cup
1/4 stick butter

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees F. Put the ¼ stick of butter into the cast iron skillet.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the cornmeal, the flour, the baking powder, the baking soda, and the salt. Stir it all together.

Place the skillet into the oven for five minutes to preheat and melt the butter.

Meanwhile, back in the mixing bowl, add the two eggs and the vegetable oil. Stir it all up. Now dump in the cream corn. Stir it all up

Add the milk a little at a time as you keep stirring. You want the batter to be “loose” but not runny. I know, I know, it’s hard to explain…but for me about ¼ cup of milk works well. It will vary depending on the “grind” of your cornmeal and the consistency of your canned cream corn.

Work with me here please...like I've said so many times before, you have to cook any given recipe several times to get it right...

Remove your skillet from the oven and pour in the batter. Cook at 450 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes.

Redneck Tip: I have a mental block about skillets. Once I take one out of the oven, I just can’t resist trying to pick it up bare handed. For this reason, I place an skillet handle cover (mitt) from Crate and Barrel over the handle when I take it out of the oven. It is amazing how far you can throw a 5 pound skillet when you forget and pick it up when it is about 449 degrees F.

Let the cornbread cool for five or ten minutes, then cut and serve.


Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Genuine Imitation Cajun Gumbo

Pat and I attended our local Mardi Gras parade Saturday afternoon here on Saint Simons Island. Having attended the celebration in New Orleans a half-dozen times, I found that St. Simons has embraced the spirit of the season in a surprisingly enthusiastic manner. Zideco music, gaudy bead throws, and costume clad citizens (many of them senior citizens) making spectacles of themselves while imbibing from plastic “to go” cups of beer and spirits…you get the picture.

Since it was Mardi Gras, I found myself wanting to do some “Cajun cooking” this weekend and I needed some Okra to do it. What should it be? Red Beans & Rice, Jambalaya, Crawfish Etouffee, or how about Gumbo?

The word “Gumbo” apparently comes from the word “Gombo” in one of the African dialects. ”Gombo” means “Okra” in English. It’s not a bad thing, because I love Okra…cooked just about any way except plain old boiled Okra.

I personally have dined on at least a couple of hundred bowls of Gumbo over the years. Most was edible, some was excellent, and a few bowls were awesome. I don’t like tomato based Gumbo, however. I like Roux based Gumbos, and I wanted to make some awesome Gumbo, if possible. I've watched Justin Wilson make Roux based Gumbo on his TV show many times before, so here is what I did…

For the Roux:

1 stick of semi-sweet unsalted butter
2/3 cup of plain flour
1/8 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp sausage (or bacon) drippings

Everything Else:

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
6 cups water

1 cup, browned spicy sausage, sliced into thin pieces

¼ stick of butter
1 medium onion-diced fine
2 stalks celery, chopped fine
¼ red bell pepper, diced
¼ yellow bell pepper, diced

1 can chicken broth
1 can beef broth
½ lb sliced, fresh okra (or 1 can chopped Okra—I had to use this)

½-¾ pound pealed shrimp (your choice of size)

1 cup rice

Diced scallions (green onions--for all my southern friends)


First, brown your sausage in a heavy skillet (preferably cast iron), reserving the grease which cooks out of the meat. Turn the heat down to low and let the skillet cool off a little, then add the butter and let it melt.

Redneck Tip: You absolutely HAVE to carefully pay attention to your skillet temperature and not let your Roux burn during this step. Adjust the temperature of the cook top eye SLOWLY as you cook your Roux. Using a cast iron skillet, there is a delay in the heat distribution, so don’t make sudden changes. If you burn your roux, you will have to start all over.

While the butter is melting, put the 6 cups of water into an 8 quart boiler and add the chicken breasts. Bring it to a low boil and skim off any foam that floats to the top.

In another large, heavy skillet, melt ¼ stick of butter. Add the onion, then the celery, and cook for a few minutes over medium heat. Stir the mix every now and then—com’ on…When the onions start to get clear, add the colored bell peppers and turn the heat down slightly. Cook for another ten minutes while you start your roux

Back over in the skillet in which you cooked your sausage--when the butter is melted in with the bacon grease, start sprinkling in the flour a little at a time and stir continuously and slowly. Once the flour is all in, add the vegetable oil and KEEP STIRRING.

What you are trying to do here is to bring the Roux to a very, very, low boil (it will actually have little bubbles in it.) In this process, the flour will change chemically and the Roux will thicken and start changing color. We want to make a dark brown roux. KEEP STIRRING, don’t let it burn.

Meanwhile, over in the boiler, check your bird parts and don’t let them boil over. After 20 minutes, turn off the heat and let everything coast. Also turn off the heat on the vegetables and finish your roux, turning off the heat on it when you are done.

After the chicken has cooled a little, remove the pieces to a cutting board and dice or tear it into bite sized pieces. Add the pieces back to the water in the boiler over medium heat and bring it to a low boil. Now add the cooked vegetables, the sliced sausage, the chicken broth, and the beef broth. Turn the heat down a little and stir in your thickened brown roux. Now add the piece de resistance, the sliced Okra.

Adjust the heat so that the Gumbo is just simmering, then toss a lid on the pot and go shell your shrimp. Remove the tails also, place them in a bowl, and squeeze some fresh lemon juice over them. (Don’t add them to the gumbo yet.)

Now mix yourself a cocktail and go watch the Weather Channel or Food Network, stopping back by to check on the progress every ten or fifteen minutes or so.

A good Gumbo can cook anywhere from one to four hours, or even longer if you have enough liquid. About ten or fifteen minutes before you are ready to serve your Gumbo, toss in your shrimp and cook until pink and done.

My Gumbo cooked for two hours before we turned it off and served it over rice, with a piece
of my Killer Cornbread for Two (or a Few) on the side, garnished with fresh parsley and diced green onions.

Ummmmmm, Ummmm Good...


Regards Y'all

The Redneck Gourmet

Deep Fried Coconut Prawns

with Spicy Ginger Pineapple Plum Sauce

As I have previously stated, I love seafood. I was cruising through the local grocery seafood section the other afternoon and noticed that they had a number of sizes of shrimp for sale, precooked. They had these giant tiger prawns that looked incredible, but they too were already steamed or boiled and laying there on ice for sale. For some reason, in the past, they always precook the giant prawns.

I commented to the seafood clerk that I wished that they occasionally had the giant prawns uncooked because I wanted to grill or fry some oriental style. He said “come back tomorrow after 2:00 PM and I’ll have some for you.”

Well, I couldn’t wait until 2:00 PM, I was there at 1:30 and there they were, in the seafood display case—uncooked giant tiger prawns. Did you know that a giant prawn can weigh 1/8th of a pound? I bought ¾ pound of prawns and got six of them in my purchase. WOW!

Here is what I did to make diner for two:

1 package baby field salad greens (or greens of your choice)

6 giant tiger prawns (about ¾ pound)
½ lemon
Rice wine vinegar
Olive oil
½ cup flour
½ cup bread crumbs
¼ cup sweetened baker’s coconut
¼ to ½ tsp cayenne pepper (to YOUR taste)
½ tsp salt
2 eggs, whisked
Vegetable oil for frying

Dressing:
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp Asian plum sauce
3 tbsp crushed pineapple
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
3/8 tsp dried ginger
¼ tsp salt

Dipping Sauce:
2 tbsp plum sauce
1 tbsp crushed pineapple

First, toss two large salad or pasta bowls into the freezer to chill.

Put together the ginger pineapple plum dressing by combining the ingredients in a small mixing bowl and stirring it all up. Now taste it. Does it need anything? Well, add it then, and when you are satisfied with the flavor, place it in the fridge to chill.

Rinse and peal the Prawns. Butterfly them by cutting them part way through from under the “curve side” with a sharp knife. You can cut them all the way through about 3/4” from the end if you want. Now place them in a small mixing bowl.

Squeeze the juice from your lemon half over the prawns and then drizzle in a little olive oil and some Rice Wine Vinegar on top. Let your prawns marinade for at least ½ hour, preferably longer. In addition to adding flavor, the marinade will tenderize them.

Once the prawns have marinated, put the vegetable oil in a large, deep, heavy skillet on medium heat. The oil should be about 1-½” deep, so adjust your oil quantity for your skillet.

In separate bowls, put your flour, the whisked eggs, and your bread crumbs/coconut mixture. Season the flour with the salt and cayenne pepper to your taste. I like lots of cayenne, and just a little salt.

Run the marinated prawns through the flour, then the eggs, then the bread crumb/coconut mixture to coat evenly on all sides and place them on a plate to the side.

Once your oil is hot (but not too hot) place the battered prawns, three at a time, into the oil. Cook three to four minutes, no longer. DON’T OVERCOOK YOUR PRAWNS. Now pull the first batch of prawns out of the grease with a slotted spoon and place them to the side on paper towels to drain. Add the next three, cooking again for three to five minutes until golden brown. Now remove them from the grease and reunite them with the other three on the paper towels.

Take the bowls out of the freezer and place a couple of handfuls of greens in each. Drizzle one third of the dressing evenly over the greens.

Now add the rest of the plum sauce and crushed pineapple to the remaining dressing to make the dipping sauce. Stir it all up.

Place three of the prawns in the middle of each plate on top of the greens and put some dipping sauce in a couple of small bowls on the table.

Pour yourself a glass of wine or iced tea, grab yourself a fork, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Arming Yourself For The Battle--Part II

(Figuring Out What Matters)

I appreciate you taking the time to come read The Redneck Gourmet and to follow my cooking exploits. I hope that you will keep coming back in the future. Back when I first got started writing in November I posted Arming Yourself For The Battle--Part I where I addressed some basic cooking stuff. My intentions were to follow up with additional postings along this topic and, in light of the lack of new recipes in my cooking recently, I guess it's time for an general cooking update.

If you are already an expert cook, please ignore this posting. Or perhaps if you feel you are already competent at cooking but you would still like to risk reading my thoughts and opinions about cooking, have at it. Then tilt your head back and laugh hysterically—unless by chance you happen to agree with me, who knows? Here goes…

What I hate about most of the stuff for sale in boxes and jars in the grocery store and dislike about half of what is written up and defined as “recipes” in recipe books and on web sites is this--they take too many shortcuts and they suggest using crappy, substitute ingredients in an effort to save time or unnecessarily simplify the recipe.

Low cal, I can understand. Low quality, I can do without. Maybe if I was cooking for five kids, three dogs, and a couple of cats I would be forced to be less smug and cavalier, but I arrogantly enjoy the luxury of only have one other mouth besides my own to feed in my home most of the time. Further, I really don’t believe that the quality of the food has anything to do with the quantity anyway.

My question is, why bother to cook in the first place if the result of your efforts isn’t going to taste as good as it looks (or maybe better)? Why not just order a delivery pizza with a genuine imitation cardboard crust or get in the car and go to McDonalds and eat a belly full of salty grease. It’s an easy way to inhale some calories, get the meal over with in a hurry, and not spend much money, you know?

I basically refuse to do this in my kitchen. Maybe I’m just into pain, but I believe that the results I achieve are worth the extra effort. To quote my dear mother, Betty, “I feel like I’ve been somewhere to eat” when I’m done with many of my meals. Not to brag unnecessarily, but it’s a nice feeling.

So what is my point besides self edification, you might ask? Well, it is this… I offer the neophyte cook some encouragement, along with a large dose of prodding for you to head to the stove and experiment with your cooking.

For the newcomers to cooking, I hope that you will follow my example and use the internet to research your own recipes before you cook them and then cook them well. I usually review at least a half-dozen recipes for a given dish before I start cooking something new.

Don’t just make an (un)reasonable facsimile of a given dish, make an authentic dish of food that tastes great and that you can be proud of—even if no one else is there to enjoy it with you. Unless you are creating something entirely new of your own design, this means looking into the origins of a dish and finding out as much as you can about it.

It also means investing in spices that didn’t come over with the Pilgrims on the Mayflower.

I hate to admit it, but I once had a spice rack that I had inherited from my grandmother. Having an antique spice rack wasn’t the problem. Attempting to use the spices that came in the jars from her kitchen for at least ten years after she passed away was of concern. I might well have been using dirt or dust for seasoning in my early cooking efforts. Fortunately, some things ran out and I finally disposed of the others last week (just kidding…)

And another thing, buy fresh herbs when they are in season, if and when you need them. You usually end up with more than you need for a given dish. There are numerous web sites that address how to dry your own fresh herbs when you have extra. When you do need dried herbs and spices, buy them in the quantities that you will use in six months or so and mark the jars so that you know how old they are. Seal the lids tightly after use or put them in zip lock freezer bags. Unlike fine red wines, most spices don’t improve with age and some keep longer than others.

Unless there are major health reasons, please avoid “imitation” anything because in spite of what your mother, your neighbor, and the label says, IT DOES NOT TASTE THE SAME. This includes imitation butter, imitation eggs, fake salt, and any other imitation seasonings. If you will take the time to get your herbs and spices right in a recipe, you won’t need a lot of salt and you can use olive oil (extra virgin-expeller pressed) or canola oil as a butter substitute in a pinch.

In spite of the news headlines, I have never seen butter or eggs actually listed as the cause of death on a death certificate. It’s usually the soft drinks, Stove Stop Stuffing mix, Velveeta “cheese food” products, MSG, and partially hydrogenated soybean fats that kill people; along with the overall quantity of food ingested.

Take my advice and you can afford to eat some real unsalted, semi-sweet butter and a half-dozen eggs every few weeks.

No get out there and start cooking, DARN IT.

Regards Y'all

The Redneck Gourmet

Cooking Reruns

I try to post new recipes as I cook them so that the details are fresh in my mind. Rather than just reading my notes and reciting the ingredients, I find that writing up a recipe right after I've cooked and eaten it allows me to include tips and details that you won't find in an average cook book.

For this reason, I'm afraid that I've been cooking a lot of reruns or really basic things the past few weeks that in my opinion don't warrant listing here in The Redneck Gourmet. I did make cornbread twice this week and have made some modifications that produce good results, so I might get enthusiastic and write cornbread up later.

Keep checking back, I'm cooking Prawns tomorrow--six shrimp that weight 3/4 pounds (total.)

Regards Y'all

The Redneck Gourmet

Carnival of Recipes

VW Val over at One Happy Dog Speaks blog just hosted the Carnival of the recipes this week. The Carnival involves blog readers and bloggers submitting their favorite recipes to share and be published on the Web in a common posting once a week. I submitted my Fried Seafood Salad recipe.

I’ve found that participation in The Carnival is a good way for me to meet some of my fellow bloggers and access some new recipes in the process.

Be sure and check out their web sites.

Regards Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

Our local grocer is killing me with buy-one-get-one-free specials. You see, it’s very quiet here on St. Simons Island these days due to the tourism lull associated with the kids all being back in school. The Snow Birds from Canada and New York and other seasonal residents have all settled in to play golf in our back yard and enjoy the weather, but the island is still running at about 50% capacity. We love it…

This low occupancy level apparently makes the grocery stores start giving things away to encourage shopping. I go almost every day and just cruise the isles looking for sales. Recently they’ve had whole beef tenderloins, pork tenderloins, and London Broils on sale for half price or buy-one-get-one free. Needless to say that I bought some, and at this rate we are going to need to buy that deep freezer we’ve been coveting.

The other night I concocted my own stuffed pork tenderloin recipe and served it with smashed red potatoes and canned asparagus with Knorr’s Hollandaise sauce. I won’t bore you with the details on the vegetables, but the tenderloin came out quite nicely and here is how I cooked it to make dinner for two:

2” to 3” diameter piece of pork tenderloin about 6” long (about 2/3 to 3/4 of a pound)
1 apple, cored and chopped
¼ onion, chopped fine
1 stick celery, chopped fine
1/3 cup butter
2/3 cup unseasoned bread crumbs
½ tbsp dried sage
½ tbsp dried thyme
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Rinse your tenderloin and pat dry with paper towels. Working on your cutting board with your sharp chef’s knife, cut the tenderloin down the middle lengthwise, stopping about 3/8” short of going all the way through. Fold the meat open like a book. Now, working from the center (near the end of the last cut), slice outward on each side through the middle of each half again, stopping about 3/8” short of severing the meat in two. Now fold the two sides of the pork open again like a book.

Redneck Tip: If I can write and you can understood my blithering, you should now have a piece of meat about 9” wide x 6” high x about 3/8” to ½” thick. If not, do a Google search for pork stir fry and come back to see me next weekend.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium skillet over medium low heat, melt your butter, then add the onion and celery and cook until clear. Next add your sage, thyme, and the apple and cook for a few minutes stirring occasionally. Now add the bread crumbs and stir some more. Turn off the heat and let things cool a bit

Redneck Tip: If the mixture looks too dry and crumbly, you can add some more butter or a bit of olive oil to moisten things up so that it will stick together.

Now let’s get our hands dirty. Scoop out the stuffing and pile it on top of your sheet of pork tenderloin. Press it out evenly with your hands so that it covers the entire piece of pork. Now starting from the edge of the short side, simply roll the pork up on itself like a cinnamon roll. You can secure it with butchers twine or toothpicks so that it doesn’t unroll while cooking.

Place the whole thing in a greased baking dish and pop it in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes, until the interior temperature is 160 degrees F.

Pull it out and lift it onto a cutting board to rest for five or ten minutes while you fuss with your vegetables. Now carve off slices or cut the whole thing in half and dive in to EAT.

Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Fried Seafood Salad

I grew up eating seafood in South Alabama. Back in the 60’s and early 70’s, before Federal Express and UPS overnight delivery, you couldn’t get good seafood unless you lived within a few hours of the coast where the restaurants had their seafood delivered by truck each day or you were willing to drive yourself to wherever the seafood was located. We did both.

The effort isn’t required today. You can get fresh seafood from everywhere delivered almost anywhere. Here on St. Simons Island we have, in addition to the local shrimp and commercially caught flounder, a variety of seafood available from all over the world. On any given afternoon at our local grocer I can find four or five sizes of shrimp, farm raised catfish, grouper, salmon, mahi-mahi, monkfish, two grades of tuna, scallops, Alaskan king crab, and lobster. Needless to say I am in Heaven. I go to the grocer almost every day.

Tonight I constructed my own version of a seafood salad. You can make it by grilling the seafood, but tonight I chose to batter and fry my seafood in a seasoned batter. Here is what I did to make dinner for two:

1 package baby field salad greens (or greens of your choice)
1 cup watercress
1 apple, cored and sliced
chunks of blue cheese
blackberries
raspberries
pinenuts

4 large sea scallops
½ pound (16 to 20) medium shrimp, shelled and de-veined
juice from ½ lemon
1 cup flour
1 cup bread crumbs
old bay seasoning
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
2 eggs, whisked
2 cups vegetable oil for frying

Dressing:
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Cocktail sauce:
½ cup ketchup
½ tbsp Worcestershire sauce
juice from ½ lemon
1 tbsp prepared horseradish
1 tbsp hot sauce
pinch of salt
fresh ground pepper to taste

First, toss two large salad or pasta bowls into the freezer to chill.

Put together the cocktail sauce by combining the ingredients in a small mixing bowl and stirring it all up. Now taste it. Does it need anything? Well, add it then, what are you waiting for? When you are satisfied with the flavor, place it in the fridge to chill.

Whisk the balsamic vinegar and olive oil together in a small bowl to make the dressing.

Redneck Tip: Add your olive oil a little at a time and whisk enthusiastically (without getting the dressing on yourself or the ceiling.) The trick is that you only need enough oil to emulsify the vinegar and it takes practice to figure out exactly how much to use. The vinegar will appear a little foamy when you are done.

Put two cups of vegetable oil in a large, deep, heavy skillet on medium heat. The oil should be about ½” deep, so adjust your oil quantity for the size your skillet.

Rinse and peal the shrimp, de-veining them as necessary. Also rinse your scallops and place everything in a small mixing bowl. Squeeze the juice from one of your lemon halves over the seafood, then drizzle in a little olive oil, some Worcestershire sauce, Old Bay seasoning, and grind some pepper on top. Let your seafood marinade for five minutes while your oil comes up to temperature.

In separate bowls, put your flour, your whisked eggs, and your bread crumbs. Season the flour and breadcrumbs with salt, pepper, and some Old Bay seasoning to your taste. I like lots of Old Bay and pepper, and just a little salt.

Run each piece of seafood through the flour, then the eggs, then the bread crumbs to coat evenly on all sides and place them on a plate to the side.

Now let’s fry some seafood. Once your oil is hot (but not too hot) place the scallops in first and cook them on each side for two or three minutes until golden brown. Place the scallops to the side on paper towels to drain, and add your battered shrimp to the oil. Cook three to five minutes, no longer, turning once. DON’T OVERCOOK YOUR SHRIMP. Now pull the shrimp out of the grease and reunite them with the scallops on the paper towels.

Take the bowls out of the freezer and place a couple of handfuls of greens in each. Drizzle the oil/vinegar dressing evenly over the greens.

Place the apple slices around the rim of the bowl and place a handful of the berries around the edge of the greens also. Toss in four or five chunks of blue cheese and the pine nuts.

Place the scallops and shrimp in the middle, put some cocktail sauce in a couple of small bowls on the table, grab yourself a fork, and EAT.

Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Thai Chicken Wrap With Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce

I love this recipe. I also love Rachael Ray, the Food network cooking diva whose TV show “30 Minute Meals” is responsible for the original recipe.

For those not familiar with her, Rachael is articulate, vivacious, intelligent, and if I were fifteen years younger, thirty five pounds lighter, and a few million dollars wealthier, I would be seriously chasing her lovely visage around the world hoping for the opportunity to cook with her ( you can read into this statement whatever meaning you will…sorry Patricia…)

This should say a great deal about Rachael as those that know me also know that I am not a pop-culture-Hollywood-bimbo-admirer and can’t name three supermodels and most actresses on sight…I have better things to do with my time.

Now as to Rachael’s recipe, it is really easy, and it is really good to eat.

I’ve modified the ingredients to suit my taste and to serve two people. You’ll need:

1 large skinless, boneless chicken breast
2 large flour tortillas
1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon peanut oil
¼ teaspoon Asian five spice powder

Spicy peanut sauce:

1/3 cup room temperature chunky peanut butter
1-1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
2/3 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1/3 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1-1/2 tablespoons peanut oil

Salad:

1/3 seedless cucumber, peeled, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced on an angle
1 cup fresh bean sprouts
1/2 cup shredded carrots
1 scallion, sliced on an angle
8 leaves basil, chopped or torn
2 tablespoons chopped mint leaves (about three sprigs)
2/3 tablespoon sesame seeds
1 teaspoons sugar
1-1/2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

Rinse the chicken breast and slice it down the middle part way through to “butterfly” it. This will help speed up the cooking. Place it in a bowl with the soy sauce, peanut oil, and five-spice powder for a few minutes to marinade.

Rinse and peal your cucumber and slice thinly. Slice the scallion, chop the basil and mint leaves, and grate the carrot. Toss all the veggies together in a medium bowl and sprinkle the sugar and vinegar on top. Toss again to distribute evenly.

Heat a heavy skillet on medium heat and toss the chicken in to cook on each side for three to five minutes.

While your bird is cooking, whisk together the chunky peanut butter, the soy sauce, cayenne pepper, and rice vinegar. Slowly add the peanut oil a little at a time as you whisk vigorously. Whisk I said, keep whisking darn it.

Sprinkle two flour tortillas lightly with water, wrap them in aluminum foil, and toss them in the oven on low heat for a few minutes.

Once the chicken has cooked through, turn off the heat and place the chicken on your cutting board to rest.

Pull your tortillas out of the oven and place on plates. Put half your salad mix on each tortilla. Slice the chicken into thin diagonal strips and divide evenly between the wraps. Drizzle the spicy peanut sauce on top. Fold and roll the wraps and spoon the extra sauce on the side.

Redneck Tip: I like to slice the leftover cucumber peal and carrot into very thin slices and place it on the side as a garnish and sprinkle the plate lightly with sesame seeds.

Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Eat Your (Pickled) Vegetables

Guess What! I broke my stove yesterday. Actually, it was a double oven with integral range top. But, really--I did break it. I was in the process of making some pickled asparagus and green beans using the two “large” electric eyes of the range and the whole shebang just shut down. The work light quit working and the vent fan quit venting and both “eyes” I was using at the time just quit.

I checked the electrical circuit breaker in the fuse box and tried again and nothing worked. Now what could I do. I already had a number of pounds of fresh asparagus "par boiled" and cooling in an ice water bath, several pounds of fresh green beans ready to "par boil," and four Ball mason jars and lids boiled and sterilized. The problem was that my pickling vinegar mix was still at room temperature.

Our downstairs condo neighbor, Mr. Harlan “Bucky” Strader, was kind enough to allow me to use his range to par boil my green beans and heat up a couple of batches of vinegar in order to save the day.

As of 7:30 AM this morning, the range still isn’t working, but it is paying a heavy price as I have unscrewed the control panel and opened up its “guts” and found the wiring diagram on the internet and I am confident that I will force it to work again this weekend or it will be forced to leave the premises. Consider this a threat...

Now--as to the Pickled Vegetables. Just like cucumbers and olives, asparagus and green beans can be preserved in a pickling solution and used as a side dish or a snack or a garnish for “adult beverages” like Bloody Mary’s and martinis. If you buy them in a restaurant or grocery store, the price can range upwards of $6 or $8 per jar. I like to make my own version of these delicacies when the vegetables are cheep and in season for half the cost.

Here is what you will need to make your own:

8 Ball one quart mason jars with new lids

fresh asparagus and/or fresh green beans
white vinegar
apple cider vinegar
pickling spice(s)
cloves
colored bell peppers (your choice)
garlic
hot peppers (your choice)
fresh thyme
black peppercorns
kosher salt

Notice that I don’t give any quantities with the ingredients. This is because everyone's (and every batch) will be different based on what you can buy in the grocery store and what you have on hand when you are doing your “pickling.”

Redneck Tip: There are a number of web sites on the Internet that outline the wherefores and whenceshalls of canning and pickling. The only thing I can add here is be careful because everything you do will be hot as heck and be clean, clean, clean or you could be dead, dead, dead. Also, Ball Jar company makes a set of tongs, a funnel, and a magnetic wand for retrieving your jars and lids and filling same that is indispensable.

The process is basically as follows:

Sort and rinse your vegetables under cool water. Place batches of the vegetables into a large boiler of water and parboil for three minutes. Drain and place the vegetables in an ice water bath to stop them from cooking further and to retain the color.

Your pickling mixture composition can vary quite a bit based on your personal tastes. I use 3 parts white vinegar to 1 part apple cider vinegar. I also add salt, black peppercorns, cloves, and dill weed to my mix. Make about 2/3 as much as the quantity of jars you expect to fill i.e. 4 quarts for 6 jars of vegetables pickled. Heat your mixture to a low boil on the stove and then turn off the heat.

Meanwhile, heat a large 12 or 16 quart boiler full of water to boiling. Place as many jars (and lids) as will fit in your boiler at one time into the water and boil for two or three minutes. Turn off the heat.

Empty the jars and remove them from the boiler, placing them on a clean dishtowel on the countertop adjacent to the stove.

Drain your vegetables and carefully load them into the hot jars. I take my time and make sure all of the asparagus and green beans are standing up vertical and parallel in the jars. When the jar is full, poke your peppers, fresh thyme sprig, and a few garlic cloves into the jar and pour enough of your pickling mixture into the jar to cover the vegetables. Put a lid ring and new disk and repeat until you run out of vegetables.

Redneck Tip: I make jars containing the same pickling liquid and different mixes of vegetables. Some are all asparagus, some all beans, then some are a mix of asparagus and beans. Also, I put more peppers and garlic in some jars so the old folks with no taste buds can have a good time and break a sweat too.

Sit your finished jars on the counter out of the way and wait for the lids to “pop” as the cooling liquid pulls a slight vacuum and seals everything nice and tight.

The finished product will keep on a shelf in a cool dark place in your kitchen for months. Please note that the “temperature” goes up the longer the veggies sit in the mixture, so watch your mouth when you take the first taste. I keep a jar in the refrigerator and pull a piece or two out as a snack every once in a while just for the heck of it...yum...

Regards Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Welsh Rarebit

Twenty five or so years ago my good friend Beth Robinson introduced me to a cheese sauce called Welsh Rarebit. What a strange name for food.

As a kid, I remember seeing an episode of “Gomer Pyle-USMC” where Jim Neighbors visited a little restaurant to order “Welsh Rarebit” and as a result of his meal had some unpleasant side effect like nightmares or sleepwalking. Needless to say Welsh Rarebit was fairly low on my list of useful cuisines until Beth coaxed me into eating it in her home.

Using the Internet as my standard resource, last year I found a really good recipe for Welsh Rarebit sauce and having cooked it a dozen times or so, I think that I have it down pat. You can use the basic sauce over veggies like broccoli and cauliflower (cooked or raw) or just dip fancy water crackers in the sauce and munch away.

I use the Welsh Rarebit sauce as a topping for a brunch recipe similar to that which my friend Beth made up. The final format has been modified based on a variation of eggs benedict and the eggs Hussard dish served at Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans. My recipe costs about $30 less than a single plate at Brennan’s.

The Welsh Rarebit Sauce ingredients include:

4 tbsp semi-sweet unsalted butter
1-1/2 cups of grated extra sharp, aged cheddar cheese
1 tsp English mustard powder
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp cayenne pepper
2 egg yolks
½ cup of warm, flat cheep beer or ale

The balance of the meal:

2 halved English muffins, lightly toasted
1 can of asparagus spears
4 slices of Canadian bacon
4 eggs

The Welsh Rarebit recipe is an exact copy of the one found on this web site. All I did was modify the quantity to make enough for servings for two people. You can adjust the amount for the numbers you are trying to serve.

I made the sauce several times without the beer, but I’m here to tell you that the beer makes the sauce.

Redneck Tip: If you don’t keep beer around for drinking, go next door to your neighbors and borrow one or run out to the local “gas and grab” and pick up one “wino” size bottle of cheep beer and let it warm up to room temperature before you start cooking. You can also take a few big slugs out of the bottle while no one is looking (it’s a shame to waste perfectly good beer—I call it alcohol abuse) and claim that you spilled it if you don’t want to be caught drinking at 9:30 AM Christmas morning.

In a small skillet, toss your Canadian bacon slices in to brown on medium low heat.

In another small skillet, heat the canned asparagus spears on low heat.

Split two English muffins in half and toast lightly in your toaster.

Heat 3 quarts of water in a four quart boiler over medium heat to get ready to poach your eggs. If you have an egg “Poacher” ignore the rest of my “egg poaching” instructions because you obviously already know what you are doing and don’t need any “Redneck Tips.” Gosh Darn it…….

Now, as to the Welsh Rarebit sauce. This sauce absolutely needs a double boiler. I’ve been meaning to mention this before, but if you don’t have a “real” double boiler (I don’t), you can make one by putting a 1 or 2 quart boiler inside a 3 or 4 quart boiler full of water. The key is to not overheat or boil the sauce.

In your double boiler (homemade or otherwise,) melt the butter over medium low heat. While the butter is melting, grate your cheese.

Redneck Tip: Please buy your own good quality sharp cheddar and grate it yourself. No self respecting Redneck Cook would buy that crappy prepackaged, pre-grated stuff they call cheese. The taste difference is amazing…

Once the butter has melted, start adding the cheese to the boiler a little at a time and stirring the mixture. Keep adding the cheese until it is all in the pot and melted.

In your measuring cup, pour in the ½ cup of warm beer and add the two egg yolks. Stir everything together.

Now add the mustard, cayenne, Worcestershire, and the beer/egg mixture to the cheese butter mixture. Keep stirring….I said KEEP STIRRING!

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.

By now your egg poaching water should be nearly boiling. Adjust the heat to keep it that way--simmering, not boiling. Poach your eggs while you keep stirring your sauce.

Redneck Tip: For those not versed in poaching eggs or those that do not have an “Egg Poacher,” here is what you do. Crack your eggs one at a time into a coffee cup. Introduce the egg into the simmering water by slowly lowering the egg in the cup into the water and gently tilting the cup to allow the egg to lower onto the bottom of the boiler. If the egg spreads out a little, you can actually push it back together by using a fork or spoon to “prod” it back into shape. Don’t worry if you get little wisps of egg white flying around the water. Just go slow and if the loose egg wisps build up strain them out of the water with a slotted spoon. Just don’t let the water boil or you’ll have a real mess on your hands (and in your pot.) I find that four to six minutes of cooking does the job. You can place the eggs on a saucer in the oven to keep them warm while you get all four of them done.

Once the eggs are poached, the Canadian bacon and the asparagus is warm, and your sauce has thickened, place the English muffin halves on a cookie sheet, top each with a slice of Canadian bacon, three or four spears of Asparagus, and one poached egg.

Place the whole shebang in the oven for ten to twelve minutes to warm through.

Remove everything from the oven, place two of each stack on pre-warmed plates, and spoon the Welsh Rarebit sauce generously over the top.

Now watch your taste buds explode with the flavor of the red pepper aftertaste in the sauce. Ummm...Ummm. Toss the dishes in the dishwasher and jump on the sofa for a late morning nap...I did!

Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

It's Not Delivery, It's DiGiorno

(Tortilloni with Pink Vodka Sauce)

In my experience, all of the forms of stuffed pasta are very time consuming to make. I’ve done the larger ones like three cheese stuffed manicotti and spinach stuffed shells using pre-prepared pasta shells, but the small pastas like tortellini, tortilloni, and ravioli, require more patience and experience rolling out your own flat pasta dough, cutting it to size, and then stuffing and shaping them. I ask that you look for some future postings of the recipes for some these delicacies to cook when you have a couple of extra hours to spare working in the kitchen.

The title of tonight’s recipe might make you think that I’m proposing that you eat store bought frozen pizza for dinner. Wrong. What I am proposing is that you eat store bought, refrigerated tortilloni with a home made pink sauce. We did tonight, it only took thirty minutes to prepare, and it was surprisingly good.

The DiGiorno brand from Kraft foods produces a number of flavors of tortilloni including the one I purchased that was stuffed with portabella mushrooms. Unlike many of the recipes I’ve previously posted, this one doesn’t require a two extra trips to the grocery store and the use of every ingredient in your pantry and fridge. It's really very easy.

The ingredients:

One package of stuffed Tortilloni (or one box of bowtie, penne, or your other favorite pasta shell)

5 tbsp. unsalted butter
2/3 c. vodka
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 can (16 oz.) smashed or pureed tomatoes
3/4 c. freshly grated Parmesan cheese
3/4 c. half and half

Don’t use salt in the sauce, because the tortilloni is SALTY!

And now, the preparation:

In a four quart boiler, heat a couple of quarts of water to boiling.

In a large heavy skillet, melt your butter over medium heat. While the butter is heating, open the can of tomatoes and grate your parmesan cheese.

Redneck Tip: I use good Parmigiano reggiano cheese that costs a lot more than the pre-grated stuff sold in the little green cans by Kraft foods. It tastes infinitely better and is worth the extra cost.

Your water should be boiling by now, so add your pasta and reduce the heat to medium high.

Once the butter has melted in the skillet, stir in the vodka and red pepper flakes and simmer for a few minutes. Now add the tomatoes and keep stirring for a few more minutes. DO NOT BOIL.

Now add the cream or half and half and keep stirring DO NOT BOIL.

Redneck tip: Watch your pasta. Don’t let it boil over and don’t let it cook beyond six or seven minutes.

Put your pasta bowls in the oven to warm.

When the pasta has cooked done, drain it well in a colander. Add the pasta to the sauce in the skillet, reduce the heat to medium low, and stir in the parmesan cheese, reserving a few tablespoons for sprinkling on top. DO NOT BOIL.

Stir everything for a couple of more minutes. Take the pasta bowls out of the oven, place them on chargers, and spoon your pasta/sauce into the bowls. Garnish with fresh parsley and a sprinkle of parmesan.

Now sit down at the coffee table in front of the TV and watch Jeopardy while you eat.

Enjoy Y’all

The Redneck Gourmet

Chewy Double Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, Walnut Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies

(More than a mouthful)

I hate bribery, but I have learned that it is generally a fact of life in the world we live in. I probably would have gone a lot farther in business if I had succumbed to employing a little “grease on the skids” of life.

There was this salesman, Gene Lorenz, who used to come by the office I worked in 20 years ago to drop off information on the steel fabrication company he represented. He never sold anything to my boss, but he would always leave a package containing a half dozen large cookies. The best darn cookies I ever had—you had to fight the secretary for a bite of one.

Years later, after I had started my own company and began a business relationship with Gene, he told me where he got the cookies. Harry’s Farmers Market in Atlanta was the place. I could eat a half dozen of those cookies in a single sitting.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a Harry’s market here on St. Simons, but when I wanted to bake some cookies for the holiday season, I did some research hoping to make my own version of my favorite cookies.

Here is what I came up with for ingredients:

2 sticks butter + 1/4 stick

2 eggs
1 cup white crystal sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup Quaker oats

1-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup walnut pieces

1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1-1/2 cups cake flour, sifted
1/2 cup whole wheat flour

3 squares unsweetened baker’s chocolate

According to my Betty Crocker Cookbook, there are a couple of details that ensure good cookies. I followed Mrs. Crocker’s instructions and my cookies came out perfect.

Betty Crocker Tip: First, let your butter soften at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes before you use it. Second, if you don’t have flat cookie sheets (I didn’t,) turn your sheets upside down and cook your cookies on the back of the sheet.

Now, as to making great cookies. In a double boiler, combine ¼ stick of butter and three squares of unsweetened baking chocolate and heat over medium heat to melt, stirring occasionally.

While your chocolate is melting, in a large mixing bowl, combine the white crystal sugar, the brown sugar, the oats, and the cinnamon. Stir everything together to combine. Slice the butter into pieces and add it to the mixture and beat with an electric mixer on low speed. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix some more. Now add your chocolate chips and nuts and mix some more.

Once the chocolate and butter mixture has melted, add it to the sugar/oats mixture and beat lightly with the electric mixer.

In a separate medium mixing bowl, sift and measure the cake flour, the whole wheat flour, the salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Mix everything together with a spoon.

Now it is time to think again—you might not need all of your flour mixture so pay attention. Add half of your flour mix to the wet mix and beat it all together with the mixer. Take a spatula and scrape the sides of the bowl to get the dry stuff off of the edges. Keep adding the flour mixture a little at a time and beating it with the mixer until you have a very stiff dough. As I said, you might not need all of the flour, depending on room temperature and your accuracy of measuring the ingredients. I said VERY stiff dough...it's important.

When you are satisfied with your dough, cover the bowl with Saran Wrap and sit it in the refrigerator for ten minutes to chill. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Open a beer or mix yourself a drink while you wait.

Redneck Tip: My Betty Crocker Cookbook had another idea I liked. Instead of cooking a whole batch of bad cookies, spoon out a little of your dough on to a cookie sheet and test-cook one cookie to see what you’ve got. If your cookie spreads out too much and is flat, add a little flour to your mix. If it is too dry and cooks like a golf ball, add a little more butter, a dash of milk, or another egg and try again. Mine worked great the first try. Also, allow your cookie sheets to cool off between batches so that your cookies don’t spread too much while cooking—remember, that’s why we chilled the dough in the first place…

Spoon out even globs of your cookie dough onto your cookie sheets. I wanted real thick, 2-1/2” cookies, so I used big portions. Cook for nine to twelve minutes, until you see the sides of the bottoms starting to get real dark.

Allow the cookies to cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes, then slide them off onto a cooling rack. Repeat until you run out of dough, or make some more dough and keep going. Makes about two dozen fat cookies.

Enjoy Ya’ll,

The Redneck Gourmet

Chicken Soup for the Blogger Mind

Last weekend when I posted “Kicked Up Meatloaf-Emeril Style” I also wrote a confession about the failure of a recipe I had tried to cook. Well folks, this weekend I have another confession, except this one is about a surprise--sort of round-about success.

I’m usually not a big soup and chili guy when the weather is warm, so when the temperature took a dip last week I decided it was time to cook a whole chicken down for stock and to make some chicken soup with the results.

Canned store bought stock is a staple in my pantry, but I still like to make my own homemade seasoned stock a few times a year to keep in the freezer for use in “special” recipes. So here goes, you’ll need the following ingredients for the stock:

1 four to five pound chicken
6 to 8 quarts of water
2 carrots, chopped
2 ribs of celery, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, diced
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp black peppercorns
1 tsp thyme
3 or 4 stems of parsley

Remove and discard the fat from the tail end of the chicken and rinse the bird thoroughly.

Redneck Tip: Also remove the package containing the neck, gizzard, heart, liver, etc. from inside the bird. I once had a friend that cooked her Christmas turkey with all that stuff still in the plastic bag inside the bird…but that’s another story…

Put the bird and its inside parts into a 12 quart boiler and add the water to cover. Set it on the stove top over medium high heat. Add the carrots, celery, onion, and garlic.

Now crack your peppercorns (I use a mortar and pestle) and place the pieces on a 6” x 10” section of cheesecloth along with the bay leaves, the thyme, and the parsley stems. Fold the cheesecloth up to form an enclosed package and tie it closed with butcher’s twine. Add it to the pot.

Redneck Tip: You’ve just made what the French call a seasoning sachet. Impressed?

Bring the whole thing to a low simmer. Now you are going to have to spend a few minutes (15 or 20 or so) with your cooking bird. As it comes up to temperature, you will start to see a foam or “scum” rising to the top. Don’t worry; this is just the dissolved fat from under the chicken’s skin and some blood that is cooking out of the bird. Skim this off as it rises because it will make your stock look cloudy if it is allowed to cook with your stock.

Once you have “skimmed your scum,” put the cover on the pot, step away from the stove and let everything simmer for five hours, checking back every half hour or so to make sure that it is simmering, not boiling.

Redneck Tip: I try to start cooking stock very early in the morning. This batch started at 5:45 AM...yawn….

Once the stock has reduced by about 1/3 to 1/2 (your choice), turn off the heat, cock the lid, and let it all cool down for a few hours.

Now here is where things went awry. I usually allow my stock to cool all day. If I’m in a hurry, it will spend a few hours in the refrigerator to expedite cooling before I finish processing it. Bad news…We have a side-by side fridge here at the condo and, this being the first batch of stock I’ve made here, I didn’t realize that the stock pot would not fit inside the fridge.

Not to worry, I sat my stockpot out on the sun porch to cool while we went out for a few hours to do some shopping and to look for a Christmas tree. When we returned three hours later, I realized that I had left the lid firmly on the pot and as a result it was still so hot you couldn’t handle it with your bare hands. This is a problem because the idea is to allow the remaining grease to rise to the top and congeal so that you can spoon it off. You don’t want greasy stock.

After another two hours of cooling, the grease still hadn’t all floated and set on top. How was I going to make soup for dinner (it was now 7:45 PM)? Can you say store bought canned stock?

For the soup I used:

The meat from one chicken breast, one leg, and one wing.
2 cans low salt chicken stock
1 can beef stock
2 medium carrots, sliced
¼ medium onion, diced fine
1 rib celery, sliced
1/2 head of escarole lettuce, rinsed and chopped
1/3 pound pastini pasta
1 tbsp fresh ground black pepper

1 egg
1/4 cup fresh grated parmesan reggiano cheese
Juice from1/2 lemon

Combine the chicken meat and stock in a 4 quart boiler over medium heat. Add the carrots, onion, celery, pastini, escarole, and pepper. Simmer for ten minutes.

Redneck Tip: I used one can of beef stock because I ran out of chicken stock. Remember, in this exercise I started out cooking HOMEMADE CHICKEN STOCK??!!

While the soup is simmering, in a small mixing bowl, lightly whisk the egg, then whisk in the parmesan cheese and lemon juice.

When the pastini is done, turn off the heat. “Temper” the egg/cheese mixture by slowly spooning some of the hot soup into it a little at a time so as to not “scramble” the egg.

Stir the tempered egg mixture into the soup, let things cool slightly, ladle into a bowl, and enjoy.
Using the canned stock, the soup took less than 45 minutes and saved dinner last evening.


Now back to the chicken stock…once it has FINALLY cooled down (I waited overnight,) spoon the grease off of the top and discard. Fish around in the pot with a slotted spoon and remove as much of the chicken meat and bones as you can and reserve on a plate. Separate the meat from the bones and reserve the meat for soup or gumbo.

Pour the stock through a fine mesh strainer or a colander lined with cheesecloth into a large mixing bowl. You now have chicken stock.

Pick through the material caught in the strainer for any pieces of chicken that you might have missed earlier and discard the bones and vegetables. The stock can be strained once more if you like, then portioned up and frozen in sealed containers for later use.

Redneck Tip: You can freeze your stock in plastic ice trays to make small cubes which are easy to store and break out when you need just a little broth for seasoning.

Enjoy Ya’ll,

The Redneck Gourmet

Baked Stuffed Brie With Tarragon Chicken Shiitake Mushrooms

I’ve always been fascinated with Mediterranean dishes that used a pastry to encase some kind of savory meat and vegetable filling. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on them in restaurants over the past twenty five years and had no idea that making my own dish “en crue” or “in puff pastry” was so easy. And then there is that ambrosia, the nirvana of Greek desert, Baklava, made with Filo pastry—err…ummm--another day perhaps

This recipe has been a favorite in our kitchen for the past year. I cook it about once a month--every time the Brie is on sale at the local grocer. It started out based on this appetizer recipe from recipesource.com. A bit of modification to the recipe and experience gained cooking it a half dozen times has yielded a great entree for two served with asparagus on the side (or your favorite vegetable du jour) or as a rich appetizer with fancy water crackers for those small, intimate get-to-gathers.

You’ll need the following ingredients:

One small wheel of good Brie Cheese

¼ pound of Shiitake mushrooms
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast

½ cup white wine (chill the rest of the wine to drink with dinner)
1 clove of garlic, diced very fine
½ tbsp tarragon
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp un-salted, semi-sweet butter

1 sheet frozen puff pastry (or if you are into pain—a pile of filo dough sheets)

Now, in the words of Jackie Gleason, “and away we go…”

Toss the wheel of Brie and one sheet of puff pastry dough out of the Fridge onto a piece of wax paper on your counter top. Cover the puff pastry dough with a clean, damp dish towel and let it thaw while you do the following steps.

Rinse the chicken, pat dry, and slice the breast into 1” thick strips. Place the bird into a shallow bowl and pour the olive oil and sprinkle the dried tarragon over the chicken strips, turning to coat evenly.

Slice the mushrooms, dice the garlic clove, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Also preheat a large heavy skillet on the stove top over medium low heat in preparation of cooking the chicken/mushroom mixture.

Add the chicken strips and cook for a couple of minutes on each side. Then pour in the wine, the garlic, the mushrooms, and kick the heat up just a little until everything is simmering nicely.

Spray a little “Pam” olive oil based non-stick spray on the inside of a small, deep casserole dish. Remove the chicken strips to a cutting board, let cool slightly, then slice thinly. Add the butter and return the chicken to the mushroom wine mixture for another few minutes. Turn off the heat and let everything coast.

Slice the wheel of brie into two half thicknesses and place one half in the center of the thawed puff pastry dough. Spoon the cooled mushroom chicken mixture on top of the brie, then top with the other piece of brie.

Fold the corners of the pastry up and over the brie, flip the package over, and place it in the casserole dish tucking the pastry neatly underneath. Place it in the 350 degree oven and cook for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove from the oven and let cool for ten minutes, slice, and serve with your vegetable and a glass of the white wine.

Enjoy Ya’ll

The Redneck Gourmet

Kicked Up Meatloaf--Emeril Style

First—a confession. I had a bit of a cooking disaster last weekend that resulted in me not posting my weekly recipe as it needs a bit more work. Crab and Shrimp Mornay was the dish, and the Mornay sauce did not work like I wanted because I started out with the wrong recipe as a basis. As a result, I wasted about $12 of fresh backfin crabmeat. I’ll do a little more research and have it figured out later this winter for publication.

Now, as to this evening’s dish--having spe