Bison Burger & A First

Bev is back on her strict diet, which calls for 3 ½ oz of lean meat at a meal, so we went with some bison from the freezer - at least leaner than ground beef. She had hers without the bread, but I had to go the whole way for mine. It was the grilled burger topped with smoked Gouda, grilled onion and peppers, mayo, and served on a wedge of muffuletta roll.

Pretty darn good eats if I do say so myself.

Since I'm an early to bed early to rise guy, I don't often go out in the evening if a means a late night.  Knowing this, Bev bought some tickets for us to go see a play at the theather located on the University of Tennessee campus.  I can't remember the last time I went to an indoor play and I'd never seen Shakespeare, so we attended a matinee performance of "The Merry Wives Of Windsor."  With my mediocre hearing and the Olde English they were speaking, I think I missed about a quarter of the dialog, but it was still entertaining and I'd go to another one, but probably something in East Tennessee English.

Have a great day.

Larry

Leftovers From The Prime Rib Dinner

You may not know this, but I like leftovers and we had rolls and a nice piece of prime rib remaining from our dinner party, so I began working on them the next day.

For breakfast, the leftover I used was the rolls. To match up with the sausage length, I selected two that were still connected.

I cut them in half top to bottom to make the slices thinner.  It was still a lot of bread, but Bev's rolls are so good, I had to do it like this. Put a little mayo on each slice.

Then top with some heated up homemade, smoked, Polish sausage from Razzleberry’s and a scrambled egg.

It made for a pretty good looking and excellent tasting breakfast sandwich.

Once again, I bit off more than I could chew, so I ate half for breakfast and the other half for lunch.

The next day my buddy Joe came over to cure my computer of a virus (don't worry, I didn't send out anything) and I promised him a good lunch.  It's just a piece of homemade muffuletta roll topped with au jus, a few pieces of thin sliced prime rib reheated in the au jus, and topped with more au jus.  It didn't make much of a picture, but it was outstanding.

I mentioned in the dinner party post that I got the jus too salty using beef base, so I decided to try again using 1 1/2 tsp in a pint of water and it was just right for me - I believe I used twice that much base before.  So my recipe for simple au jus now is:

1 qt water, boiling
1 tbsp beef base
1 light shake granulated garlic
1 shake worstershire sauce
¼ bay leaf
3 tbsp butter

Thanks for visiting Almost Heaven South.

Larry

Seafood Day 3 – Steamed Oysters And Clams

It's official - Spring is here, even though it may snow a little next week.

This would have been posted yesterday, but I decided to give you a two day break from oysters. After eating oysters for two previous meals (see 2/28 & 3/2), enough time had passed that we were at risk of losing those remaining along with the littleneck clams, so they both had to be eaten. Bev and I were really busy all day, and while I’d planned linguini and white clam sauce for dinner, neither of us wanted to cook. We decided to go for something very easy – just steamed those babies.

I steamed the clams in this concoction that came from What’s Cooking America.  I used 1/3 of this recipe and still had way too much - it was good but not great.

3 tablespoons butter
1 small white onion, coarsely chopped
6 parsley stems
3 cloves garlic, lightly chopped
1 bottle dry white wine
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes

I’d learned to cook and eat steamed clams from my dad when we lived in South Jersey in the 60’s, but I remember they were always like eating rubber. This recipe cautioned to take them up as soon as they began to open or they would be rubbery. So I took them up earlier than I’d been taught and sure enough the ones fully opened were like rubber and the ones barely open were much more tender and sweeter.

The oysters were steamed in water for 10 minutes as they were for Bev and she likes hers pretty done.

Following the picture, she removed the oysters from their shells and put them in a bowl of melted garlic butter – I tried one and it was very good.  If left to my own devices, oysters would almost always be eaten raw and clams would go into chowder.  But for those of you like Bev, who like the taste of oysters, but can't handle eating them raw, we've had them cooked three different and delicious ways over the last few days and there's still our favorite cooked version - fried, which we also had one night.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Smoked Rib Roast & Pepper Sauce Taste Test

We had friends, Laurie and David, and her sister and brother-in-law over for dinner to make up for their missing out on the prime rib Christmas dinner. We had the same basic meal of smoked rib roast, twice baked potato, homemade rolls, Caesar salad, and cake for dessert – provided by them.

But before we ate and since there were five hot sauce eaters in the house, we did a little taste test – a favorite thing to do around here. Since I’d gone to the Pepper Palace during our Gatlinburg trip and bought Fire Ant Juice to go with the three I had on hand, I couldn’t let the tasting opportunity pass by. For this tasting, I used Fire Ant Juice. Sriracha, Franks, regular Tabasco, and asked each participant to rate them best to worst. We had unidentified cups of each sauce and pieces of homemade bread and oyster crackers for dipping. This is a post-test shot.

After tasting, each person recorded their scores on the tally sheet and here are the results – lowest point count was best.

The results were:
1. Sriracha - 9
2. Tabasco, Fire Ant Juice – tied at 13
3. Frank’s - 15

Sriracha was the clear favorite being selected 1 or 2 by everyone, but as David pointed out, the best sauce still depends on what it's being used for.  And what does this test prove – absolutely nothing as evidenced by the vast number of, sometimes very different, hot sauces stocking the store shelves.

For the rib roast, I once again used the reverse sear method in my smoker as described in my Christmas meal post.  A major storm system moved through the area while I was cooking and we needed the rain, but not an inch plus in a couple of hours.  I didn't spend much time hanging around the smoker and from what I saw on TV the next day, it looks like we dodged a bullet.

Bev made up the potatoes the day before using the Pioneer Woman’s mashed potato recipe for the stuffing. The Caesar salad was just romaine lettuce, Newman’s Dressing, and homemade croutons. We also decided to add a first course of French onion soup, which we had in the freezer. I'll blog about it next time I make it, but I used a recipe from Cook's Illustrated that caramelizes the onions in the oven for 3 hours and makes an outstanding soup.  I didn't have any gruyere or other swiss cheese, so I used a combo of mozzerella, for stringy, and romano, for flavor - it worked very well.  Forgot the photo.

The three shots of my plate all came out blurry and I failed to get any of the other dishes, so please pop  on over to Big Daddy Dave's for shots of everything.

It turned out very well except the beef base I used resulted in an au jus that was so salty it almost ruined the meat - it will be made with consumme from now on.  Can you believe I would only eat beef well done until I was 16 years old - age does bring a little wisdom.

I didn’t get a shot of it either, but Laurie’s cake was outstanding.

A final muffuletta comment.  I went back to our trip to Nola and compared my muffuletta to the one from Central Grocery and they both looked similar and good until I saw the one made by Rawtalent, it's awesome.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Quasi- Muffuletta

In Oak Ridge, where daughter Wende now lives in addition to working, there is a little ice cream shop named Razzleberry’s Ice Cream Lab, where they make their own ice cream. They also have a few tables for serving lunch and a small meat case. The meat case came into existence to provide meat for the lunches and to sell as deli meat. But the reason they have the meat in the first place is that they are first generation Polish Americans and wanted to continue eating the good sausages (including lunchmeat) they were used to getting in Poland and one thing led to another.

So when Wende came over the other day, she brought me some mortadella, imported from Poland, and some capicola, imported from Italy – I thought we had salami, so I didn’t order any of it. She also brought me some of their homemade Polish sausages.

It just so happens that Bev baked bread that same day and made one loaf of bread into two muffuletta rolls. By restricting its raise time and brushing the top with water, it had a texture and chewiness very similar to what we had it NOLA.

The next day, I sliced one of them in half and began to build my muffuletta - I called it quasi as I didn’t have all of the traditional ingredients.

First it got a layer of capicola.

Then a layer of pepper jack cheese as I had no provolone (I would have liked another layer but used all I had) followed by thin sliced pepperoni as a substitute for salami.

Then the mortadella.

And finally the olive salad, which I’d brought back from the famous Central Grocery in NOLA.

I had to work fast to apply the salad and get the lid on to minimize the olive oil runoff.

How’s this for a breakfast sandwich? Almost as good as Mickey D’s
:-).

I put two quarter pieces on my plate but could only eat one – I’ve lost 17 pounds taking Phentermine as it’s makes me feel really full on much less food.  I ate the rest of it by days end and I still have the ingredients for another one.

The next morning for breakfast, I tried the sausage by nuking it for a minute to warm just a little.  I sided it with a slice of homemade bread and scrambled eggs, which were cooked in the garlic butter that Bev had put her steamed oysters in the night before (day after tomorrows post).  It gave a really nice flavor to the eggs with just a hint of oyster.

The sausage had great flavor, with nice garlic and a good smokiness - my goal is to make sausage this good.  Until I do, I may make a special trip to Oak Ridge when Polish sausage/ kielbasa is called for.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Seafood Day 2 At Almost Heaven South - Oysters Rockefeller

The plan for this meal was a pint (I was told about 12 oysters by the sales guy) of shucked select oysters made into Oysters Rockefeller and a second pint beer battered and deep fried. I’d saved the shells from the last meal to use for the Rockefellers. I laid out the dozen best shells and opened the pint of oysters – they were huge and no way would they fit into the shells I had, so I cut some in half and ended up with 18.

I used a recipe from Cooks.com that seemed to fit what I wanted to make. Following is what I actually did, which is basically a half recipe and it was more than enough.

18 oysters in shell
1/2 c. finely chopped parsley (or equivalent dried parsley)
10 oz bag of fresh spinach
1/2 c. green onion tops
1/2 c. melted butter
5 drops Tabasco sauce
1/8 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/8 tsp. garlic powder
1/8 c. Parmesan cheese
1/3 c. Panko bread crumbs
2 tbsp Bacon bits

My directions are very different from the original recipe and this is what I did. Heat olive oil as needed to a 12” skillet, add parsley, onions, and spinach and sauté until spinach is wilted. Let cool, remove from pan and chop spinach to desired size.

Melt butter in a medium bowl and stir in Tabasco, S&P, garlic powder, Parmesan, Panko, and bacon bits (I’ll use real bacon next time). Then mix in spinach mixture and bread crumbs and split the mixture among the oysters based upon size.

The last oyster meal, Bev said they were not smoky enough, so I tossed a chunk of hickory into the fire for these - I could have used other woods, but hey, this is the South, home of hickory smoked BBQ. It generated plenty of smoke.

I cooked them for 7 minutes, did a little re-arranging and cooked for 2 more minutes. They were cooked just right and the only adjustment was adding a couple more drops of Tabasco to each oyster. Here’s my plate.

There is no doubt that the fresh shucked oysters from the previous meal had more flavor than these already shucked ones from the container and I’ll use them for the Rockefeller next time – I believe it’s the oyster liquor in the fresh ones that makes the big difference in flavor.

For the second meal in a row, the grilled oysters filled us up and even though we had the batter made for the fried oysters, we had to pass on them.

Seafood has been a big challenge for me and I’m now up to 8 seafood/fish dishes I would be willing to serve to company:

Cajun grilled shrimp
Seafood/fish scampi
Char-grilled oysters
Blackened fish
Beer battered crappie
Pan-seared catfish with brown butter on black olive toast
Oysters Rockefeller
Smoked salmon
Crab cakes ala Cathy

I’m loving our seafood-a-thon and hope The Shrimp Dock does the half price thing again.

Thanks for stopping by.

Larry

A Fatty Sandwich

I smoked a stuffed fatty (stuffed and smoked sausage) a little while back and tried to decide whether to eat it or freeze it, at which point I discovered a piece of one in the freezer that I’d smoked in December. This made the decision - freeze the whole new one eat the partial old one.

I usually just slice and re-heat then side or top with an egg, but for this meal I opted to try it as a sandwich. A stuffed fatty is, after all, just a cooked loaf of meat with other things in it, as is meat loaf – and I love meatloaf sandwiches and I love breakfast sandwiches.

While I like my meatloaf sandwiches cold, I thought the fatty would be better hot. So I sliced off a couple of pieces, trimmed them to fit the bread and nuked for about 45 seconds.

I also like onion and cheese on my meatloaf sandwiches and even though the fatty had both in it, I decided to top with a little more – I subscribe to the “no such thing as too much cheese” philosophy.  Sorry abut the brightness.

After another 30 second nuke job, I assembled the sandwich.

It was an outstanding way to begin a very busy day.

Have a good one and thanks for stopping by.

Larry