Farewell...

Hello everyone.  It is with regret that I must make this my final entry into my foodie blog.  I have been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and will have to completely change my diet, which excludes about 99% of the recipes that I have posted here.

I'll miss sharing my recipes with all of you, but to be honest, what I'll miss more is pizza, gyros, soups (too salty), ribs, steaks, and pretty much anything except Wilford Brimleys goddamned oatmeal, which is about what I'm left with.  I guess it beats the alternative.

Enjoy my recipes that I have posted.   I wish you all happiness and great fun in the kitchen.

--Mike

Colonel Roy's Steak Trick

Steak!   Who doesn't love a wonderful big slab of flesh, grilling away over a bed of red-hot coals? But the price of beef has gone through the roof over the past 5-10 years to the point that one may as well spring for crab legs or lobster as a Rib Eye...even at home.

Ahh, but my good friend and long time partner in foolishness, maple syruping and talking out of our arses Colonel Roy comes to the rescue with a method (along with a couple tricks of my own) to make even the cheapest cuts of beef turn out tender and delicious!!!

You'll need:

1 Cheap Beef Roast.  Chuck, Round, English, whatever is on sale, find a thick one that, if cut in half through the middle lengthwise, would make two nice steaks.  Pay attention to marbling, it should have nice marbling and the fat shouldn't be too thick.  Boneless preferred.

1/2 pot or so of stale coffee
1/2 c. Olive Oil
Large ziplock bag

Cut the roast in half through the middle the long way to make two steaks.  Use a very sharp knife and be careful.  Put the steaks in the ziplock bag, pour the olive oil in and fill the rest up with coffee.  Shake around a little to mix well.  Set aside for at least two hours.  More is better, I like to do this in the morning for grilling in the evening.   If you're going to do it all day, put in fridge.  If you're just going to do it for 2-3 hours, don't put in fridge.

About 1/2 hour before grilling, lightly season both sides with garlic salt and pepper and a dollup of olive oil about the size of a U.S. quarter poured on to each side of the steak and rubbed in.

Grill over hot coals.  I like to use maple coals, but good old charcoal works also.   It will be about as close to the tenderness and taste of a good rib-eye as you can get for a quarter of the price.

Summer Garden Goodies I

Summertime...late July, when the garden starts producing lots of yummy things to eat.   Here's a couple recipes for you.  One is an Oriental Sesame Green Bean recipe that I came up with, the other is a Cucumber salad that my mom always made, and my favorite way to have it is over mashed red new potatoes.  Mmmm!

Cucumber Salad

3-4 medium cukes, peeled and sliced
3-4 green onions chopped or 1/2 medium onion, sliced thin
Head of Dill (optional)
Vinegar
Water
Sour Cream
Mayo
Salt
Pepper

Put the cukes and onions in a bowl.  Add vinegar just to cover, then add about 1/4 as much again in water.  Add a tablespoon of Salt.   Let sit for at LEAST an hour...two is better.

Drain cukes and onions.  In bowl, mix cukes, onions, chopped head of dill, a large dollup of sour cream and about half that in mayo.  Stir, adjust salt and pepper to taste, let sit at least a half hour before serving.  Serve as a side with summer meals like burgers, BLT's, or my favorite way, over mashed new potatoes.


Oriental Green Bean Salad

1 lb fresh green beans, ends trimmed.
Oriental sesame oil
Soy sauce
Olive oil
Sesame seeds
Salt
Sugar

Steam the green beans in the microwave for about 5 minutes.   In the meantime, heat up a tablespoon of olive oil, and a tablespoon of sesame oil in a wok or fry pan.  When beans are done steaming, add a tablespoon of soy sauce to the wok and toss in the green beans.  Add sesame seeds to your liking.  Stir frequently on medium high until beans are 'done', seeds are toasted and the liquid is almost gone.  Sprinkle in about a teaspoon of sugar and salt to taste, stir constantly til beans just start to brown.   Serve.

Maple Smoked Country Style Ribs

We have a cabin up in Price County that sits in a forest which is about 3/4 made up of Sugar Maples.   Naturally, in the Spring, we make maple syrup.  It's a great activity during a time of year when one really needs to get the hell out of the house and *do something*, even if mostly what's involved is standing around, drinking beer, talking smart and stoking the fire.

What with all that standing around and fire-stoking, it's also a perfect time to fire up the smoker.  Might as well tend two fires as one, eh?   We have one of those Brinkmann smokers with the offset firebox and they work really well, especially with a few modifications (Search YouTube for the mods if you have one).  Any kind of smoker will work.   And, if you time it out right, your maple boil will be done about the same time your meal will...the smoking process takes about 6 hours + a good 1/2 hr to get the fire going.

Ingredients:

3-4 lbs Country Style Ribs
1 cup REAL maple syrup
2 T smoked paprika
2 T chili powder
2 T cumin
2 T garlic powder
2 T onion powder
2 T black pepper
2 T salt
Fresh maple sap
Small chunks of maple wood, split into kindling size, about a half of a pail full.

I usually buy a bulk package of Country Style Ribs...they can be bone-in or boneless.  Take them the night before and put them in a very large mixing bowl.  Add to this the maple syrup and all the spices and mix thoroughly with your hands til each piece is well coated with seasoning/syrup.  Refrigerate overnight.

First thing in the morning, about 2 hours before you light the fire, put about 2/3 of the maple kindling into a pail and fill with fresh maple sap. (You can use water...but if you have sap, use it!)  Save 1/3 of the kindling out for dry use (it's easier to regulate your fire temperature with a mix of dry and wet, adjusting as necessary).  

Light your fire with some of the dry wood and added maple twigs, etc. til you get a good hot fire going, then add some of the wet maple and adjust so that the heat in the smoker gets to about 180-220.   Keep the temp at that range throughout the process.

Once you have your smoker up to temp, put all the meat in your smoker.   It helps to also put a pie tin of beer in somewhere below the meat, to keep it moist.  Seal up your smoker and keep the fire going.  Don't peek!

After 2.5 hours, open the smoker up and flip and re-arrange all of the pieces...ones closer to the fire should be flipped and moved furthest away, etc. to make sure all the pieces get about the same exposure.   Close it back up, keep the fire going within the specified temp range, and take the meat off after 5 hours.    Serve with your favorite barbecue sauce.

I like to serve with cole slaw, beans and french fries, and I also like to make my own barbecue sauce, but I never really make it the same way twice so it would be hard to post a recipe for it.    It usually involves ketchup, beer, maple syrup, finely diced onion, garlic and god knows what else, and then slowly simmering til I like the thickness.

Update:  If you're lazy (like me), you can skip all the seasonings listed and just use Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning, available in most stores.  Rub that liberally into the ribs and slather with syrup.  If you can't get real maple syrup, try crappy store bought syrup mixed with molasses.

Best Ever Turkey Pot Pie

Kathy and I both love to cook.  It's not often, however, that we're in agreement on what we like.  I tend to like spicier, meatier things, she tends to like things that are pasta and veggie-heavy.  In short, she likes healthier things than I do, as a general rule.

Recently, we were hungry for turkey, so we did the whole 9 yards...turkey in the oven, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, etc.   There's only two of us in the house, so when I went to look for ways to use up the leftovers, I started researching Turkey Pot Pie recipes.   As is usual for me, I took what I liked from several different recipes and made one of my own.   It turned out so good that my wife and I both agreed...best turkey pot pie ever!   Hopefully, you'll agree.

2 C frozen peas and carrots
2 C frozen green beans
1 C chopped celery
1/2 C butter
1/2 C chopped onion
1/2 C flour
1 t salt
1 t pepper
1 t celery seed
1 t onion powder
1 t garlic powder
1 1/2 C chicken broth
3/4 C milk
4 C cubed cooked turkey meat - light and dark meat mixed


Preheat oven to 425.  Place the peas and carrots, green beans, and celery into a saucepan; cover with water, bring to a boil, and simmer over medium-low heat until veggies are tender, about 8 minutes. Drain the vegetables in a colander, set aside.

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat, and cook the onion until translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in flour, salt, black pepper, celery seed, onion powder, garlic powder; slowly whisk in the chicken broth and milk until the mixture comes to a simmer and thickens. Remove from heat; stir the cooked vegetables and turkey meat into the filling until well combined.

Fit a pie crust into the bottom of a deep pie dish. Spoon the filling into the pie crust, then top with another crust. Pinch and roll the top and bottom crusts together at the edge of pie to seal, and cut several small slits into the top of the pie with a sharp knife to release steam.

Bake in the preheated oven until the crust is golden brown and the filling is bubbly, 30 to 35 minutes. If the crust is browning too quickly, cover the pie with aluminum foil after about 15 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.