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

Get Ready To Be Amazed...


Sunday afternoon was fairly mild here on the island of St. Simons on the Georgia coast.

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--with the oven still out of service--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 on sale for LESS THAN HALF PRICE.

The fridge and freezer is full as we speak.

Then 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. That said, I can personally testify that I will probably never boil or steam crab legs ever again.

You need to try it for yourself, and 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

Now as to the preparations:

First toss your frozen crab in a large boiler and cover with water and a few splashes of lemon juice 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 them drain on a a pile of paper towels in a pan or on a cookie sheet.

After they have drained, brush both sides of each cluster with oilve oil. Sprinkle them with a little salt and pepper or better yet, some Old Bay Seasoning.

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 couple of plates 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