Sauces and Stuff

Here we go again

2009-02-02T16:37:00.003-05:00

With all that is going on in the world, one would think that the Massachusetts Attorney General would have better things to do with her time.

Free the Grapes!: Massachusetts Attorney General to Spend Taxpayer Money to Maintain
Discriminatory Ban on Wine Direct Shipping

February 2, 2009, Napa, CA – Despite a decisive opinion and remedy order by widely respected
U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley will spend
taxpayer dollars to appeal the judge’s decision, which promised an expansion of consumer choice
in fine wine.

On November 19, 2008, Judge Zobel ruled unconstitutional a Massachusetts statute that bans winery-to-consumer shipments from wineries producing more than 30,000 gallons and who retain a Massachusetts wholesaler; these wineries account for over 90% of all of the wine produced in the US each year, according to the plaintiff’s filing (Family Winemakers v. Jenkins). On December 18, Judge Zobel enjoined the state from enforcing Sections 2, 18 and 19(F) of the Massachusetts General Law Chapter 138.

Now, Attorney General Coakley intends to appeal the final decision to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The 30,000 gallon cap statute has been a lightning rod for consumer anger and press opposition. Now that it has been ruled unconstitutional, Massachusetts’ citizens should wonder why their taxes will go to defend this anti-consumer statute whose sole purpose appears to be to maintain a state-sanctioned monopoly in wine distribution,” said Jeremy Benson, executive director of Free the Grapes, a national coalition of thousands of wineries and 300,000 wine lovers.
(www.freethegrapes.org).

According to Free the Grapes!, if successful, the AG’s appeal will:

• Reduce Consumer Choice: Maintain a law that effectively bans all winery-to-consumer
wine shipments, making MA one of the remaining 15 states that continues to prohibit its
of age citizens from purchasing the wines they want directly from licensed, regulated
wineries;

• Ignore Working Solutions: Successful direct shipping “model” legislation is working
successfully in a majority of the states – the model bill satisfies state regulators and wine
lovers, and in several cases, provides states with a new source of tax revenue;

• Waste Taxpayer Money: If the state loses, then the case will have expended taxpayer
money on needless legal wrangling;

• Ignore Opposition in Other States: The “cap” approach has been introduced
unsuccessfully for three consecutive years (FL), litigated (AZ), angrily opposed by
consumers (OH), and now ruled unconstitutional (MA);

• Provide No Benefit to Massachusetts Wholesalers: Even the chairman of the country’s
largest wine and spirits distributor, Southern Wines & Spirits, was quoted in IMPACT
trade magazine that direct-to-consumer shipping has “…not hurt us in any way.”
Free the Grapes! encourages Massachusetts consumers to visit its website at
www.freethegrapes.org and personalize a message sent automatically to Attorney General
Coakley, as well as to send letters to local newspapers for consideration.

Massachusetts Background

In 2005 Massachusetts House Bill 4498 was introduced and passed both the House and Senate.
The bill was condemned for seeking to place conditions on out-of-state wineries that did not exist
for Massachusetts’ wineries. No in-state wineries produced more than the 30,000 gallons, and
they could sell directly to Massachusetts consumers as well as through state wholesalers.

Out-ofstate wineries over the 30,000 gallon cap would not have this option – they would have to either sell directly to consumers or through a Massachusetts wholesaler, if a wholesaler chose to
represent them. Wineries that retained a Massachusetts wholesaler and produced more than
30,000 gallons were prohibited from direct-to-consumer shipping. Governor Mitt Romney vetoed HB 4498 in November 2005 – commenting on its "anti-consumer effect, as well as its dubious constitutionality" – but the veto was overridden. In January 2006, Governor Romney introduced, but failed to pass, a separate bill similar to legislation working successfully in many other states, commenting that “It’s time we end the monopoly that wholesalers have over wine sales…”

Instead of passing the Governor’s new bill, the wholesaler supported HB 4498 became law in 2006. On September 18, 2006, Family Winemakers of California v. Jenkins was filed, stating that current Massachusetts law violated the nondiscrimination principle of the Commerce Clause, which prohibits “laws that burden out-of-state producers or shippers simply to give a competitive advantage to in-state businesses.” (U.S. Supreme Court, Granholm v. Heald, May 2005). The case was funded in large part by the Coalition for Free Trade (www.coalitionforfreetrade.org) with Family Winemakers of California as lead plaintiff.
Massachusetts is the seventh largest wine consumption state in the U.S. (source: Adams Wine
Handbook, 2007, figures from 2006 data). For more information, visit www.freethegrapes.org,
www.familywinemakers.org, www.coalitionforfreetrade.org.
# # #
Media Contact: Jeremy Benson, Free the Grapes! (707) 254-1107

What’s happening?

2008-07-11T09:44:00.004-04:00

It has been since March 16th that I posted an entry and a lag of almost 6 months is not typical for me. Unfortunately, life has taken hold and finding the time to blog has not really been the issue, but finding the time to post new and interesting things has.

Seriously how many times can you post the different variations of the same things over and over again without it getting tiring to even yourself?

Since the last post the baby is now over a year old! I have a new job and all that a new job entails. Traveling a lot for work as well to places like Zurich, Amsterdam and even Newark!

Also, I have been training for a few sprint triathlons later this summer including-

Dover Sherborn Boosters Triathlo n
FireMan Triathlon

Needless to say it has been a busy summer!

So what about the food posts? Assuming I make something creative (and I have a few ideas) I will be back to make the post. Otherwise look for some new content in the fall when I bust out the slow cooker!

Shrimp Scampi

2008-03-16T10:04:00.002-04:00

Shrimp Scampi is one of those dishes I really enjoy but rarely get in restaurants. Along the lines of spaghetti and meatballs, it is a dish best kept simple but people try to make fancy.

The list of ingredients is fairly short and simple:
shrimp
linguine
parsley
lemon juice
shallots
garlic
parmesan cheese
white wine
olive oil
butter

The amounts of this items can vary based upon your taste of even what you have in your kitchen, fresh parsley is a must though. Most people have everything listed above except the shallots and the fresh parsley, so pick some up when you hit the store to get your shrimp.

Speaking of shrimp we actually cheat sometimes and roll with pre-cooked, shelled, de-veined frozen shrimp. I spoke with the fish guys at Whole Foods and they said all their shrimp are frozen when they get them, so aside from what the recipe calls for, the representation was that there is little difference.

One could defrost them in a brine, which always makes shrimp tastier, or even get them raw and brine them but the plan is to put a fresh dish on the table in 30 minutes. When we grill shrimp we always try to make a point of brining them first, it is worth the effort.

To make the scampi, I prep first by mincing up the garlic and shallots

and then sauté them in about 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of unsalted butter over medium heat for about 4-5 minutes.

At the same time, I have the pasts boiling and in to cook. Once the garlic and onions are sautéed, I add 1/4 cup of white wine, the juice of half a lemon and then the shrimp. Since the shrimp is already pre-cooked, it is mostly a quick stir or two at this stage. I then remove from heat. Once the pasta is done, I plate the pasta, then spoon the shrimp / sauce over the pasta, finish with some parmesan cheese and fresh parsley.

Some fresh ground pepper to taste and you are good to go. Serve with some crusty bread and the rest of the white wine and you have a pretty tasty and quick meal. A non-tradition variation to this dish is to add some tomatoes to it. It adds some nice color to the dish as well as a good contrasting flavor.

We now make this about once a week and have served it for company. The only gotcha is that with the pre-cooked shrimp you have to be careful not to overcook it when you incorporate the sauce and the shrimp together.

Give a Cow a Day Off

2008-02-28T15:35:00.002-05:00

Roughly a month ago I received a very nice email from Megan telling me about the Ronzoni "Give a Cow a Day Off" campaign in support of the new Ronzoni Smart taste pasta. Smart Taste pasta that contains as much calcium as a glass of milk, and because of that cows can take a day off.

There is a pretty funny web site for the campaign as well as a Youtube clip. Megan was also nice enough to send me a box of Ronzoni pasta and a recipe to give the new stuff a twirl-

Having a soon to be 5 year with a huge hunger for pasta, the appeal of her getting more calcium is very important to us, so I was willing to try it out.

The recipe is simple enough-

ROASTED CHERRY TOMATO, SPINACH AND ASIAGO PASTA
Serves: 6

Ingredients:
3 cups cherry or grape tomatoes, halved 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp. olive oil 2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. salt and pepper 1 bag baby spinach leaves, about 4 cups
1 pkg. RONZONI® SMART TASTE™ Thin Spaghetti 1/2 cup shredded Asiago cheese (approx.)
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil or parsley Toasted pine nuts (optional)

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Toss the tomatoes with the balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper.
Spread the tomatoes on a foil-lined, baking sheet.
2. Roast the tomatoes for 20 to 30 minutes or until shriveled and lightly browned. Scrape the tomatoes and juices into a
large bowl. Add the spinach.
3. Meanwhile, prepare the pasta according to package directions.
4. Toss the pasta with the spinach, roasted tomatoes, Asiago and basil. Sprinkle with toasted pine nuts (if using).
Serve with additional cheese on the side.

The only hard part about the recipe is that the smell of the balsamic vinegar drives the sou chef out of the kitchen and I really enjoy having her in there to help me out.

easy to recognize box

the stinky tomatoes roasting away ( I actually like the smell)

the whole combo mid toss

ready to go with a spoon and fork

So the conclusion? I would give both the pasta as well as the recipe two hooves up. Get it! "Give a Cow a Day Off" and two hooves up!!! Stop me now!

Seriously though, the pasta tastes the same which to me is a big deal. We tried the Barilla Whole Grain pasta but gave it up since it never seemed al'dente. The Ronzoni cooked up the same way and had the same feel in the mouth. Seems like a no brainier to me.

A post about everything

2008-01-09T21:43:00.000-05:00

This is a post about the most simple and delicious of things
a cupcake

I could leave it at that and enjoy the vanilla frosting, the multi-color jimmies and the soft chocolate cake but there is much more then just that.

For making these cupcakes was about everything in life that is important. Some sweetness, some delayed gratification (in the waiting for the cupcakes), some instant gratification (in the licking of the spoon), some silliness, a lot of laughing and spending time together putting cup cake mix on our noses.

For these were not just any cupcakes mind you, they were cupcakes that my 4 1/2 year old made with my wife and I. The cupcake baking kit was a present from one of our close friends who absolutely adores both of the girls. She also knows that every tooth in our 4 1/2 year olds mouth is a sweet tooth.

I have a lot of memories about my mother and most of then involve food and the kitchen. When I was sick, there was always a hot bowl of matzoth brei ready and when I could not keep that down a bowl of white rice. I remember the half a loaf of bread she used to make grilled cheese sandwiches after football practice freshman year and I remember that her matzoth balls were always soft and never rock hard.

I also remember my father making fresh apple sauce with my mom and my sister and I sneaking spoonfuls of the still hot sauces out of the pot. I also know that for the life of me I still manage to screw up omelets, while my father made such crazy ones as a banana and jelly omelet.

I cook because I enjoy it, I also cook because it keeps me connected to who I was as well as who I am. I get untold pleasure in being able to share that connection with our girls.

(setting the cups in just right)

(mom (as always) providing gentle guidance)

(one bit for the cupcake, one bit for me)

Some day years from now our children will be making cupcakes with their children. They will say, I used to make these with your grandparents when I was your age and that would be the sweetest thing of all.

The RWT Chili Cookoff - The Roundup!

2008-01-07T16:44:00.000-05:00

A thanks to running with tweezers for the RWT Chili Cookoff! For those of you who are new to Sauces and Stuff a very hearty welcome and to everyone else welcome back. There are some excellent and varied recipes for chili on RWT so make sure to take a look!

And click on the tasty bowl of chili for my entry for the Chili Cookoff and if you are interested, send me an email and I would be happy to mail out a sample of my homemade chili seasoning.

Put a steak in it

2008-01-07T09:47:00.000-05:00

Unless you have a great relationship with the local butcher or want to pay through the nose for something like a whole tenderloin roast from Lobel's, purchasing a tenderloin and doing the trimming yourself is the best option.

I have seen Alton Brown go to Costco and trim up the huge tenderloins but that is overkill for what we needed. I went down to the local Stop and Shop and purchased 6 pounds of tenderloin. If you are a fan of Cook's Illustrated, you will know that in their taste tests, the Stop and Shop tenderloin beat out all the local as well as national brands including Lobel's and Niman Ranch. The only downside (or upside from my perspective) is that you need to trim it up yourself.

Trimming your own tenderloin has many advantages; 1) you only pay for what you need 2) you can make sure it is trimmed correctly and 3) you can tie the tenderloin up in different thicknesses to facilitate better temperature per your guests liking. Tie one end thinner and it will cook faster then the thicker end and 4) it looks nicer and takes little time.

Most butchers can trim a tenderloin fine but in a grocery store they won't go the extra and needed step of removing the silver from the tenderloin. What they usually do is trim the outside and then tie the silver sides against each other. The tenderloin looks pretty but it has that tough fibrous section running through it. Removing the silver is an important step in prepping the tenderloin and should not be skipped at all. if you do not know how to trim a tenderloin it is pretty simple to do, but I won't walk you through all the steps here.

Basically you need a few things; 1) a wicked sharp fillet knife 2) paper towels 3) butcher twine. Trim away any of the fat you do not like, make sure you flip the meat around and hunt out all the little bits. Remember that you are paying a lot for this beef and just trim away the fat only. When it comes to the silver you should see a silver band that runs down the back.

Because my hands were pretty gross at this point I did not take a photo but I found this one on the web. The method that I use is to use my knife to pull up one section then hold the meat with one paper towel and hold the tip of the silver with another paper towel. This way I can pull the silver right off the tenderloin with out using the knife. Also, I would never use a knife on a metal surface. They should of put a cutting board inside the sheet rather then cutting on the metal.

(above photo stolen from internet)

When you are done trimming you are left with a mess of beef that you need to assemble into something presentable.

You can see from the various shapes that there is a natural sort of Lego fit to everything.

When you place it all together and tie it up the tenderloin takes on that familiar look. I purposefully left one side a bit thinner as my father enjoys a more well done piece of tenderloin.

I sprayed the tenderloin with Pam and then generously rubbed with fresh ground peeper and salt. I wrapped the tenderloin up in plastic wrap and rolled it to make sure it was all evenly covered. This went into a pre-heated oven at 375 for about 25 minutes or until the thickest part reached 120 degrees internally.

The above shot is after resting for 10 minutes and the shot below is after about 15. The inside sections were nice and red with some of the thinner sections a nice pink hue.

Trimming you own tenderloin is a useful skill and makes for great presentation.

Leftovers

2007-12-17T08:45:00.000-05:00

I am a pretty big fan of leftovers. If it was good the first time, it has to be good the second time around right? Chili is an excellent left over meal and when I saw the RWT Chili Cook-Off, I dug through my previous posts and sent in my chili post.

What is the RWT Chili Cook-off?

The RWT Chili Cook-off!

follow the directions:

The RWT Chili Cook-Off will start on December 5th and go through December 31st. In that time, post your favorite chili recipe to your blog.
There are no rules. I encourage all sorts of recipes and ingredients. They don't all have to have ground beef in it! Add pork, veggies, sausage, beans, chicken...let your imagination go wild.
After the closure of the challenge, a winner will be chosen (i haven't decided if this is going to be a democracy or not) and awarded a food-related prize!
Send your cook-off submissions to runningwithtweezers@gmail.com. Include in your email: your name, your blog name, your location, the permalink to your post, and your recipe name.
Good luck!

So here is the link from earlier this year, Chilly Willy, it is a bit more then a chili recipe as it includes my home made chili spice mix as well as homemade cheddar cheese biscuits.

2007-12-15T10:29:00.000-05:00

A while back I asked people's opinion on the ads in my blog. The feedback was mixed though pretty consistent. Folks that had ads on their blog liked them and folks that did not, did not like them.

Even so, there are a variety of ways for people to monetize traffic to their blog. One of the blogs I read, C for Cooking, has a Amazon page where referrals are paid if you purchase items through his page.

So as an early New year's resolution, I am going to make a concerted effort to click through on all the ads on the blogs I read. Some of the blogs that I really enjoy have no ads at all such as Culinary Types and Stephencooks and others such as Food Blogga and WhiteTrash BBQ have a few tastefully placed ads. Just go over to the right and select from the blogs that I have listed.

The point of is that the food blogging community is fairly small. Regardless of your position on blog ads, it makes sense to support those of us who do choose to place them on our blog.

If you feel so inclined, the best way to do so on Sauces and Stuff is to use the google search window that is at the top of the page.

Just enter what you are looking for into the search, the same way you would do in Google and click on any of the four ad links that are shown!

Thank you all for your support!

A whole lot of stuff

2007-12-13T09:29:00.000-05:00

As my friend Rob pointed out a while back for a blog named Sauces and Stuff there is very little sauce and a whole lot of stuff. I did point out that the blog is names Sauces and Stuff, not Just Sauce so there is a little wiggle room here.

Rather then post the same ol, oh I made a turkey for Thanksgiving photos, I figured I would follow-up with a very simple salad dressing. Is that sauce enough for you Rob?

When most people think of Italian in Boston, they think of the North End. The North End, ain't what she used to be. For the most part the food is still very good but most of the smaller mom and pop restaurants have been replaced by more of the regional commercial type of restaurants. That combined with the lack of parking and waiting in line for a marginal meal makes the trip not worth the effort.

If I am in the area, the one exception I will always make is to stop by Bova Bakery . Bova is open every day 24 hours a day and serves fantastic pizza and calzones until 1:00 am.

For Southern Italian food one of the best restaurants I believe is Carlo's Cucina Italiana in Allston, MA. The food is fantastic, the prices are more then reasonable and the Stracciatella Alla Romana soup is to die for.

The house salad they serve is sinfully simple. Greens, thinly sliced carrots, olives, red onions and a simple dressing.

The dressing is easily made at home by combining, one part lemon juice to 5 parts light olive oil and a splash of red wine vinegar.

The dressing has a very simple flavor to it and it is best served by dressing the bowl and then adding the greens to it.

The final thing that makes this dressing so great is that pretty much at any time most folks have a lemon, olive oil and some red wine vinegar in their house. Try it tonight!

Let it snow

2007-12-03T10:06:00.000-05:00

Let us call it Winter's first snow. We did have some snow a few weeks ago, but since the Christmas decorations were not up yet I am calling privilege and saying today it the first snow.

Were we live- we barley qualify for the Dusting / 1-3 inch line. In fact, I think we are the line. However, WBZ is calling it the first winter storm so lets go with it. With the snow outside it would seem to be a perfect time to talk about the salsa verde I made about a month ago. It is loosely based upon the recipe at Kalyn's Kitchen for Salsa Verde with Green Tomatoes, Avocados, and Cilantro.

The conundrum we had at the end of the summer was that the tomatoes left in the garden had not ripened. With Fall coming we could not risk loosing them. The sou chef made the call and she picked the few remaining tomatoes.

The ingredients were simple enough to pull together, a few tomatillos, small onion, the green tomatoes, avocados and a chili pepper. The red tomato was added for some color.

All of the vegies got rough chopped and the limes were reamed for the juice.

To the veggies, I added some sea salt, some olive oil, about a teaspoon of garlic, chopped fresh parsley and mixed it all up.

We plated it up in a chip dish with contrasting chips and the salsa in the middle.

so lonely, yet so delicious

Dhu

2007-11-28T12:51:00.000-05:00

In my opinion the best cooking magazine around is having a book signing at the home of America's Test Kitchen. ATK is probably the best pure play cooking show around and the companion show to Cook's Illustrated. For the record Saveur is probably the best food magazine around.

Not sure if the RSVP link works, if not you can call the number listed at 617-232-1000. See you all there!

Viva Las Vegas

2007-11-11T19:28:00.000-05:00

I am traveling for work this week to ...

I get back at the end of the week so look for some new posts next week and as we all know Thanksgiving is right around the corner so who knows what this year has in store. Anyone for Turducken?

Can I get a little ZZ Top to rock us out of here?

Popcorn Time

2007-11-06T09:20:00.000-05:00

Not sure you heard, but there is only one undefeated team left in the NFL

When you can make catches like that, why wouldn't you still be undefeated?

The Colts are a very good team but I doubt that they would have been able to overcome the level of bogus penalties that New England faced during the game. Faceguarding, come on that used to be a penalty but has not been in years, next time roll out the A team for the umpires.

The Dallas / Pats game was really not a call for popcorn regardless of what TO had to say. However, truth be told, any time we have an excuse to make some popcorn we jump on it. Both the sou chef and I are huge fan of popcorn, or as we say in Massachusetts, we think popcorn is pissa!

About a year ago I wrote about our love affair with popcorn and the fantastic Whirley Pop Popcorn Popper. So we got on the step stool climbed to the top of the pantry and pulled ol'reliable down.

In terms of actual popcorn we have tried pretty much everything. From the organic stuff at Whole Foods, which was not that good, to the fancy White Cat Popcorn at Williams-Sonoma. The best, most reliable popcorn is still Orville Redenbacher popcorn. We use a half a cup of popcorn, a shake or two of sea salt, about one tablespoon of oil and one tablespoon of unsalted butter. All of this goes into the Whirley and away we go.

The sou chef went to town on cranking away

a few minutes later out came the fluffy white gold.

Rather then just have the standard popcorn we did a little combo action. We made four varities of popcorn; 1) black pepper, 2) lime popcorn, 3) hot sauce and Parmigiana cheese and, 4) plain or just salted popcorn.

A little bit of all the variations

You can see the hot sauce trapped in the popcorn

Hard to show 'lime' popcorn but you get the idea

The easiest way to add anything to popcorn is to scoop some into a lunch size brown paper bag and the add the topping or flavor. This way you can shake it up really well and the bag takes any excess oil away. For the hot sauce and Parmigiana cheese, I add a good four to five shakes of sauce and then maybe a tablespoon of cheese. You can use cayenne pepper as well but I like the way the sauce gets trapped. Add the sauce first then the cheese, shake it up real well and the when you pour it into a serving bowl make sure the excess is kept in the bag.

We have also made kettle corn, which is basically adding sugar at the very moment of popping, but that takes over the whole batch. If you want to pretend you are at a fancy restaurant I will make some with truffle oil and charge you $12 for the serving.

popcorn, truffle, cheese, hot sauce

Boo!

2007-10-31T12:16:00.000-04:00

Happy Halloween!

Talk about a scary photo - thankfully we won the Series and all is fine with the world.

We did our usual carve the pumpkin last night and saved the seeds to make roasted / toasted pumpkin seeds. There are hundreds of overly complex recipes for doing this on the internet. Me, I like to keep it simple

Remove as much of the pumpkin stuff from the seeds as possible, then fill the bowl with water. If lucks has it, most of the stuff sinks and then you can scoop up the seeds.

I then like to toast them in a large non-stick skillet for a few minutes over medium heat to remove as much moisture as possible.

After that into a 350 degree over on parchment paper for about 20 minutes or so.

Afterwards, I toss lightly with some salt and into a Tupperware. I am snacking on some right now as I sip my Dunkin Donuts and write this post.

Delish!

And by the way, I seriously don't like candy corn

Mmm...cheesy

2007-10-23T12:01:00.000-04:00

These games are killing me. The games start late and then they run late. Being a Sox fan I am never completely convinced we have won till the game is over. Last night I stayed up late for the entire game even though it was pretty clear that the Sox have won. Today the weather is damp, cold and that bone chilly. Great weather for a nice warm bowl of macaroni and cheese!

5 ingredients for GrandMa Tisch's macaroni and cheese:

-elbow noodles
-butter
-half a can of stewed tomatoes
-block of gruyere cheese
-finely chopped medium yellow onion

melt a whole stick of butter

add the gruyere cheese and slowly melt it down

over low heat melt the gooey mess down and add the boiled elbows, the 16oz can of tomatoes and the chopped onion.

keep stirring over low heat and serve.

Sticks to your bones and warms you from the inside.

Williams-Sonoma, cook books, coupons

For once, then, something

2007-10-18T20:11:00.000-04:00

Summer has finally passed and with it we had the final harvest from our garden. As far as a first attempt at a garden the sou chef and I did a pretty good job. We lost the basil and the black eye peas to some sort of animal yet we saved the tomatoes and the cucumbers.

The garden was something that I really wanted to do and share with our daughter. You experience a lot of joys with children but introducing them to something like a garden where they can tend it, watch it grow and then enjoy the bounty is a treasure. Few things bring greater joy then hearing a 4 year old shout excitedly over the things they have achieved.

We decided to pick the tomatoes early rather then loose them to a frost. We decided to make
Salsa Verde with Green Tomatoes, Avocados, and Cilantro from the excellent blog Kalyn's Kitchen.

I have also been working on my photos and feel these are much improved.

looking good team!

Big, bigger , biggest

And since it is the end of summer (technically it is Fall but I am wearing shorts as I write this) who better then Robert Frost to escort us out-

For once, then Something
by Robert Frost
Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

Glutney

2007-10-12T09:25:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week I was in California for work. While I usually do room service for dinner, I prefer to eat breakfast out.

If you are ever in the Silicon Valley area Hobbee's is pretty much a California institution.

Below is what I had for breakfast for under $10.00

The crazy looking bowl of eggs is actually their variation on Huevos Rancheros. According to the menu it is:

"Huevos Rancheros: A tortilla topped with black bean chili, cheese, 2 eggs, sour cream, and tomatillo sauce.. Served with coffeecake, toast or Hobee's "Country-style" hashbrowns.($8.75)"

The huge slice of blueberry coffeecake is a standard at Hobee's.

So if you are ever in the Silicon Valley make sure to add Hobee's to your visit.

Sweet and Simple

2007-10-05T16:16:00.000-04:00

Life has been ramping up lately. Work has been going at full speed, the sou chef started her second year of pre-school and her assistant (I guess that would be the line cook?) is now hitting 15 weeks.

Time for meals that are both wicked fast and can be frozen or kept for left overs later that week.

enter

the

chop-suey

According to Wikipedia the dish I ate growing up is not chop-suey at all. Rather it is just elbow macaroni, ground beef, diced yellow onion and 2 16 ounce cans of stewed tomatoes.

I don't care, I call it chop suey, my wife calls it chop suey and besides, meat and macaroni sounds a bit sketchy to me.

This could be a one dish meal if you cooked the meat in the same pot you used to boil the pasta. Basically it it is as simple as can be-

1 lb of ground beef
1 lb box of elbows
1 medium yellow onion diced
2 cans of stewed tomatoes

Mix and serve

We got a little fancy and added some parmigiana cheese to it for the wife and I.

The sou chef, who won't eat hamburger, ate up the 'meatballs' in the chop-suey.

I do like to make fancy dinners but during the week this hits the spot. It is cheaper then take out and there is enough leftovers for lunch the next day.

A brief programing note. The photos are something I have never been real thrilled with on Sauces and Stuff. Some of the blogs I read have really over the top photos. Over the next few months I will be working on the photos on the site.

Scalloped

2007-09-26T21:16:00.000-04:00

So wasn't I a lucky duck! For my birthday (which was several months ago) my wife made me dinner! Usually it is a team effort around the house but this time I got to hang with the kids and let her have a go in the kitchen. The dish was scallops in a butter cream sauce. The cream component being creme fraiche.

First the scallops dredged in a flour.

A little bit of butter into the pan.

The floured scallops go into their nice little butter bath!

Just about 45 seconds or so per side over medium heat.

Out come the scallops and into the pan goes the creme fraiche, some more butter and some lemon juice.

Let the whole thing come to a boil to reduce.

Then add some salt and pepper, top with parsley and it is done!

She served this with a side of fettuccine and some steamed asparagus. This was a hit and certainly a dish that we could serve for company.

A garden grows

2007-09-20T09:55:00.000-04:00

If this was colonial times this garden would not sustain us through the day must less the winter. However, that was not the point. We wanted a way for the sou chef to understand the connection between the food she eats and where it comes from. She loves cucumber and tomato salads so planting cukes and tomatoes is an obvious choice. As an added bonus we planted some basil and black eyed peas. The basil we think got eaten by one of the many bunnies and animals that run around the yard here in the 'burbs.

black eye peas - still small but growing

the only cucumber that grew

a few good looking tomatoes

About two weeks later we went out and the sou chef picked the tomatoes and cucumber. The salad was rated as 'very yummy'. Based upon the success of the garden we are gonna to expand it next year.

Free the Grapes

2007-09-20T09:32:00.000-04:00

Massachusetts has ridiculous laws around direct shipment of wines into the Commonwealth.

For those of you that do not live here, the it is very difficult to get wines shipped here. In the realm of every day life it is not that big of a deal. So short of driving to New Hampshire to get something different that has not been marked up 20% one's options are limited.

There are a few wineries that have paid the fees and gone through the permitting process to be able to ship to Massachusetts. I have added a list of wineries that are able to ship to Massachusetts to the site. Some of these wines are pretty expensive but I would encourage everyone to buy at least one bottle from any of these wineries. Let them know that there efforts are noticed and appreciated!

If you are looking for an advocay group, click on Shackles the grape above to go to Free the Grapes.

Remember

2007-09-11T14:08:00.001-04:00

Reposted from Ann Althouse's blog, Althouse.

Pizza Spectacular

2007-09-06T09:01:00.000-04:00

For my birthday I was the happy recipient of a VillaWare St ainless-Steel Pizza Grill. For some time I have been making pizza on the grill as well as in the oven without the benefit of any pizza stone. Overall, I was quite happy with the results but the pizza monster inside of me always wanted to try a pizza stone.

The challenge was trying a pizza stone on a grill. Technically speaking, one can not use a baking stone directly on an open flame. Not sure if this is folk lore or the actual truth but I read it on the internet and as we all know if it is on the internet, it must be true.

A combo pizza stone and rack seemed to be the way to go and the reviews have always been positive for the VillaWare product. Amazon has it for a great price and with my Amazon Prime membership I got it in two days for free shipping. Hard to shake a pizza crust at that!

We decided to make two pizzas, a cheese pizza for the sou chef and a sort of margarita pizza for us.

The sou chef did her usual great job of assembling the pizza-

a little bit of sauce

a little bit of cheese

even more cheese

then onto the Pizza Grill

for some tasty results

Our pizza was equally as tasty

Fresh tomatoes from Volante Farms, mozzarella from Maplebrook Farm (you can buy it at Roche Brothers, Sudbury Farms and Whole Foods and basil from our 'garden'

So how were the results? The sou chef has proclaimed that it was the best pizza ever and she now only wants to eat daddy's bar-b-que pizza. I liked the crust that the pizza stone created. The built in thermometer was very handy as my Weber one has died a slow death some time ago.

What are my complaints? For starters the thing needs to heat up for about 20 minutes, this combined with any additional grilling sucks a lot of LP out of the gas tank. The other two 'issues' is that the Pizza grill takes up a lot of space on my Weber. Not the grills fault but of course now I need a bigger grill and finally, if you make pizza as an appetizer the questions of where one puts a wicked hot pizza grill and frame is a bit of an issue.

For less then seventy five dollars with free shipping this was a great deal in my mind.

Bring on the night

2007-08-30T13:47:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about our friends shrimp recipe. If you have not had a chance to read it, I highly recommend it. Not only is it very easy to make but it is quite tasty. In fact we had it last night for dinner.

Several weeks ago we had the very good fortune of being able to head out to Martha's Vineyard to our friends house who we got the recipe from. It was a very good weekend as usual and they are very good friends and gracious hosts. For the 'adult' dinner we had a tremendous meal of Wagyu Strip Steaks,

native Vineyard corn

fresh Island beans

and salad with Lawrence's shrimp.

All of this was accompanied by a health side of margaritas

until there was no more...

The preparation for the steaks was sinfully simple

a little salt

a little pepper

When you keep things simple it usually works out the best with food.

Dinner was quite good and the steaks were the best steaks I have ever had.

The weekend was a very relaxing time over at the Island. We listened to a lot of the Police running around getting stuff for dinner, so bring on the night

wagyu, salt, pepper, margarita

Salad Days

2007-08-02T10:33:00.001-04:00

During the summer and with a now 6 week old in the house, salads are a very easy dinner for mom and dad. We always have salads with dinner and often we create huge salads as the main course, it is something that I have blogged about previously.

Fresh produce and veggies are key to any salad and we recently scored some excellent stuff at Volante Farms. If you live in the 'greater' Needham area Volante is a great place to get your produce from in addition to some killer pies.

The most current haul included some fantastic tomatoes. Feeling a bit light headed from the lack of sleep, I figured a nice tomato rose would be the right touch to the salad.

The key to making a tomato rose is all in the knife work. A very sharp paring knife is essential. If your knives are long in the tooth, get them sharpened.

Basically, you peel the skin in one continuous piece from the tomato. You can do this with apples or pretty much any type of fruit. The peeling in a bit of a slice and saw action. Just stay focused and make sure you do not cut deep into the flesh.

Once you are finished, you get a long piece of skin as you can see above. The next step is to roll up the skin and while holding the bottom widen out the top of the role with your finger. It should look something like this.

food, wine, eating, cooking, kitchen

All we do is wine

2007-07-27T10:04:00.000-04:00

How to make your wine cozy

We drink our fair share of red wine. The challenge of how to prevent the drops that occur when pouring wine, from running down the bottle and staining our counter or table is not a huge challenge but it is a bit of a pain.

Licking the side of the bottle does work and it also helps you from wasting any wine. The downside is that it does not look good in front of company. Many wine sites sell those little rings that go around the bottle or there are a variety of other gadgets that keep the drip at bay.

The problem with any gadget that, is that you need to bring the gadget with you. A much easier method is to make a little bottle thing (help me with a word here) with a napkin. Any place you would bring a bottle to has a napkin. If they don't ahve napkins they probably have a paper towels. If they don't have napkins or paper towels, they probably don't care about wine getting on the counter and table.

1) Spread out a napkin flat. These are Costco's finest napkins :-)

2) Fold the napkin length wise into thirds

3) Loop the napkin around the wine bottle and make a bit of a tail with the napkin. The tail will be tucked back under the bottle.

4) Fold the tail back under. If you do it correctly, the napkin itself will keep the bottle thing in place.

5) Slide the napkin over the bottle and gently press down to set the napkin in place.

Ta Da

Now if I can only make it fit around a rectangular bottle I can cover up my MD 20/20

Shrimp

2007-07-19T10:04:00.000-04:00

Shrimp is one of the easiest things to cook. With the latest addition to our house turning one month old, fast and easy dishes are key these days.

Fast and easy when combined with cooking outside is a can't miss combo.

A good friend of ours make some great marinated shrimp. My understanding is that he got the recipe from an old Williams & Sonoma cookbook, but I just call it Lawrence's Shrimp.

2 lbs of shrimp 1/2 cup of tomato sauce 1/4 cup of olive oil 3 tbs of crushed garlic

Marinate for a few hours and grill and then we served this up on a bed of rice.

Yummy!

2007-07-05T09:56:00.000-04:00

Nothing says Forth of July like a totally American dessert such as Sara Lee Pound cake and Cool Whip.

As you can see from above it is a very complicated process involving 4 ingredients:

blueberries, strawberries, Cool Whip and Sara Lee Pound Cake. A 4 year old is optional, but helpfull.

The process is to slice the pound cake into 1/2 slices and line the baking dish. Cover with a layer or Cool Whip and a layer of strawberries. The another layer of Cool Whip.

The complicated part s to replicate all the bars and stripes of the American Flag. We failed in a faithfull reproduction old Old Golry yet it proved to be a tastefull representation!

Results may vary, I actually failed art in college.

Yummy!

So very big hit and wicked easy to make with the assistance of a 4 year old and a 3 week old!

Site Update

2007-06-26T15:40:00.000-04:00

Lately the updates have been coming slower and slower here at Sauces and Stuff.

The reason is pretty straight forward.

On June -12th, the sou chef got an assistant in the kitchen as she welcomed her new baby sister into the world. I now have two sou chefs in the kitchens it is pretty exciting though sleep is at a premium these days.

When sleep returns so will the posts so bear with me!

I did make two subtle changes to the blog role. I dropped a blog that while I did read, I never felt that they actually ever made the food they wrote about. Something about the posts just never seemed authentic and it bothered me.

On a positive note, I added two new bbq blogs. The Hampton Smoker and White Trash BBQ. Please stop by them and check them out.

Tim Curry?

2007-06-09T13:48:00.001-04:00

No not that Curry

The food kind of curry

We decided to go with a chicken red curry. Real easy to make if you have some key ingredients in house. Namely, red curry paste, fish sauce and coconut milk. This is probably not an authentic curry dish, but it is damn tasty and wicked easy to make.

As we say in Boston (though I never hear it any more), this dish is pissa!

Started with some rice

And I gathered the ingredients, I took the shot prior to pulling out the red curry paste. Can you guess what brand it is!

I cooked a package of chicken, roughly a pound and a half, seasoned with some salt and pepper. It also gave me an excuse to use my new OXO non stick tongs!!!

Once the chicken was done, I set it aside and then added some fresh broccoli and some frozen peas, corn and carrots to the pan. The frozen veggies gave off some water so nothing was needed in the pan. After about 3-4 minutes, I then added a can of coconut milk and simmered an additional 3-4 minutes. To that I added a generous table spoon of the red curry paste and about a teaspoon of fish sauce, back goes the chicken and simmer a few mintues more until everything is nicely coated.

Once the rice was done, I sprayed a ramekin with some Pam and packed it with rice.

I inverted the ramekin on the plate

Then I garnished with a piece of trimmed broccoli stalk.

Why?
Why not

TADA

Woops about the curry on the rice mound.

This dish is sinfully easy to make. It took us awhile to figure out how much of the curry paste to use and a generous tablespoon works for us. Even the sou chef will eat this dish.

By Popular Request

2007-05-30T10:26:00.000-04:00

I normally do not make posts of my daughter's Sebastian Spoon. However, when I get a request far be it from me to deny what the people want!

Notice the spoon / straw action

Sebastian looks very excited to be part of your meal!

"We what the land folks loves to cook Under the sea we off the hook"

Chicken Cutlets

2007-05-21T13:27:00.000-04:00

Chicken cutlets are sinfully easy to make. With all the stuff that goes into the store bought ones it is a real wonder why we don't make them ourselves. True, we do keep the Bell and Evans frozen cutlets on hand, which makes me a bit of a hypocrite. If we do have fresh or defrosted chicken on hand we do prefer to make it ourselves.

2 beaten eggs on a plate and then another plate of mixed equal parts Parmesan cheese and Italian bread crumbs mixed together

Set the plates side by side and have the baking sheet ready to go.

Place the chicken breast into the beaten egg making sure to cover all surfaces. Then move the chicken over to the breading mixture.

The end result should look something like this.

Bake at one's usual chicken temperature. For our oven that is about 350 for 20 minute.

Rainy Days

2007-05-21T13:26:00.000-04:00

What to do when it rains in Boston for four days?

Make banana vanilla milkshakes of course

one ripe banana

a few scoops of vanilla ice cream

add some milk to cover the mixture and then use an immersion blender

serve to your favorite four year old and see the sun come out again
(Sebastien straw optional)

In-N-Out

2007-05-18T17:19:00.000-04:00

And what were you doing last Tuesday at 9:00 pm?

Well I was at In-N-Out Burger enjoying a cheesebuger with everything, french fries and a soda. As far meals go when I am on the road for work, this is one of my better ones.

I passed on the usual milkshake for some reason that night.

I'm back, baby, I'm back

2007-05-16T15:25:00.000-04:00

So talk about a real pain. First the computer went, then the camera went. Those two combined with being on the road for three weeks left little time and content to blog about. For the 2 or 3 people who read this blog I am sure it has been heartbreaking.

One of the posts I had in the proverbial can was from Passover. When I was just a little one my mother used to make my sister and I fried matzah or more commonly matzah brie. It is one of those things that either you like or you don't and you either have a way you make it or you don't

While there are a lot of recipes for matzah brie (google returned 32,000 hits actually) it is fairly simple.

Eggs, salt, butter, matzah.

If there is some raw onion in the house I like to sweat the onion in the butter first and then add the eggs and matzah.

So very complicated: Scramble the eggs.

Soften the matzah in water a bit. You want it soft not goopy.

Mix the eggs with the matzah. I like a 4 or so whole matzah pieces broken up to 2 eggs, but some people like more matzah some like less.

Put the whole thing in a fry pan with the butter and scramble the mess of it. Add some salt and perhaps butter and ta'da!

This is one of my favorite foods, so simple and it totally reminds me of growing up.

Out of Order

2007-04-30T14:34:00.000-04:00

Ugg, I am not having good luck with technology these days. First my computer went several weeks ago and then last night my camera crapped out on me. I am looking to get a new compact sub 8 mega pixel camera, if anyone has suggestions let me know.

In the mean time, the blog is probably in limbo for about 2 weeks.

Cute

2007-04-19T16:14:00.000-04:00

So the next few weeks will be hard for posts since each week will bring me to a new place for work. A few nights ago for no real reason I decided to get creative with the sou chef's dinner plate.

The plate is a gift from her friend for her birthday. Perfect combo plate that has the size and heft of an adult plate but made of plastic. The added bonus is that it is not some syrupy character like Barney.

The funny thing is that she ate everything up, she loved the plate. Tomorrow I am going to post the chicken curry we made this week, could not get to it in time for my usual Thursday post.

Kugelsaurus

2007-04-12T11:41:00.000-04:00

Now that is a lot of kugel.

There are many things that I miss about my mother since she passed away. Too many to get into here. Passover was always a big production in our house and my mother's kugel was always top dog for me. The sweet noodle kugel that she made for the High Holidays was my preference but the matzo kugel that she made for passover was equally as tasty.

Kugel is very simple to make since it is basically a noodle or matzo pudding but I have never bothered to make it myself. For Passover this year I figured why not and while the results were not the most visually appealing the general consensus was that it was quite tasty.

The usual problem with matzo kugel is that the matzo makes the kugel very dry. Since one does not eat unleavened bread on Passover, noodle kugel is out of question.

The recipe I used seemed to be fairly common for a matzo kugel:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
1 20-ounce can unsweetened pineapple slices or chunks, 1/2 cup pineapple juice reserved
8 matzos, broken in 1 1/2-inch-by-2-inch pieces
3/4 cup raisins
4 eggs
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cinnamon

My computer is still in the process of being rebuilt so I have not had a chance to edit the photo for size, so here we go.

I started with an egg matzo rather then the traditional salted or unsalted matzo. The egg matzo was kosher for Passover so I felt that I was being true to the recipe. Egg matzo has a much softer feel then normal matzo. I broke the matzo into pieces and let soak for about 5 minutes in water to soften it up.

I had my sou chef mix the wet ingredients together. This would serve as the custard component. The raisins were covered with water to also soften them up and the brown sugar measured out into my new Oxo measuring cup which allows me to read the volume from the top.

The butter was melted into the baking dish with my new favorite method (I put the measured amount of butter into the dish as the oven pre-heats), then the brown sugar was spread on top.

Next came the pineapple

Then the wet ingredients are mixed together with the drained raisins and the matzo. The matzo was drained and the excess water was squeezed out. The whole thing was then pour into the baking dish.

There was some extra matzo left over and I covered the kugel with the pieces of matzo for no other reason then why not.

Sort of looks scary at this point. The whole thing was baked for about 45 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Then it was pulled out and let cool for another 15 minutes before serving.

My attempt at being artsy with the photo

Much better angle and you can see how the custard has set up. To be forthright, I did not know how this would turn out. Kugel, like matzo ball soup, is deceptively simple to make but the results can be disastrous. Everyone gave my version 2 forks up and I will certainly do a noddle kugel later in the year.

ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2007-04-05T19:50:00.000-04:00

Sorry for no post today, I have been swamped this week. In addition to a complete meltdown (figuratively ) of my home computer, posting has been a challenge. We did make a good matzah kugel for Passover which I intend to post early next week so there should be some good stuff soon!

Enjoy the weekend as well as Easter.

Surf and Turf

2007-03-29T14:58:00.000-04:00

Not sure what happened on the way to to store but I must of lost my mind. Wikipedia has a definition of Surf and Turf a "menu is guided not by aesthetic concerns, but for the sake of vulgar display."

Sounds good to me

The menu was simple enough; Fillet, Alaskan King Crab Legs, shrimp, scallops and asparagus

Since I was making this up as I went along (note to self do not go to store hungry) I need to figure out how to pull it all together.

For the shrimp and scallops a salsa would go well. We had a half open jar of Green Mountain Gringo Salsa in the fridge. This would be a good base but I was not looking for an overwhelming spicy flavor so to the salsa I added some cucumber, orange juice, parsley, olive oil and some cherry tomatoes.

It is roughly about an inch and a half of an English cucumber that I skinned and chopped up for the salsa. The orange juice etc I added to taste and the olive oil help loosen the salsa up a bit.

You can actually see a little piece of the cucumber in right above the tip of the spoon.

The crab legs were already cooked, so I wrapped them in foil and put in a 300 degree oven.

The shrimp and scallops were gonna go on the grill at the last few moments of the fillet finishing. The asparagus was to also go on the grill. Washed, trimmed and wrapped in foil with a bit of sea salt, pepper and olive oil for about 5 minutes.

The beef while fillet was not center cut tenderloin, which is no bigger when it is just us. I actually do not mind this cut of the tenderloin as it has a bit more fat which means a bit more flavor. The problem with this cut is that it does need some trimming.

Once trimmed, they were tied, sprayed with Pam and salt and peppered. They had been sitting at room temperature for about 30 minutes. From here they went onto a pre-heated grill for about 4-5 minutes a side.

Once I flipped them over to finish the other side I waited until about the last minute and then I added the seafood.

The shrimp were cooked until that nice reddish shrimp color and the scallops cooked for maybe 45 seconds or so a side.

All of it came off the grill roughly the same time. The fillet was cooked until an instant read was 125 and after resting the temp went up about 10 degrees to a perfect medium rare.

We plated up everything and put the salsa on the scallops and shrimp. The crab legs I broke into a bowl and ate plain.

I would certainly do this again for company. We actually bought the meat and seafood at Costco and the total price for everything was under $50, which I think is a deal. For company, I would probably make a whole tenderloin and then slice it up and serve it that way.

Pizzalicious

2007-03-22T09:15:00.000-04:00

Pizza is a big favorite in our house. While I prefer to make it on the grill lately the weather has not been cooperating and we can make due utilizing the broiler in the electric oven.

There are a variety of ways to make pizza, pizza dough, pizza sauce, you get the idea. That is one of the things that makes pizza so versatile.

To mix things up we went with three pizzas on two pizza doughs (one was a half-half). A plane cheese for the sou chef and a half pesto chicken - half ricotta pizza for us. If you are interested in the basic method we use to make pizza you can take a look at this prior post. For a more in-depth on how to make pizza dough, I would suggest either clicking over to Stephencooks or to Simply Recipes. Both have really good sections on pizza dough and Stephen has even won a blog award from Slahfood for one of his pizzas. How cool is that?

Combo Action pizzas-

-Pizza dough cut into two balls for two even pizzas
-Breaded chicken (will post next week) or store bought breaded chicken
-Ricotta
-Muir Glen Diced Tomatoes with Italian Herbs
-Cheese (we went with a three cheese blend)
-Seasoning - basil, thyme, oregano, fennel
-Amore Pesto Paste

needs more time under the broiler

nice contrast between the two sides

Yummy, starting to brown and get all gooey and melted

One of the many great things about pizza is that it is an excellent way to engage our 4 year old in the kitchen. I could of made the pesto from scratch, and started with whole tomatoes then crushed them down. With mid week meals such as this, time is of the essence so short cuts are not only much appreciated, they are encouraged.

Weekend Cookbook Challenge

2007-03-16T16:30:00.000-04:00

I am participating in the Weekend Cookbook Challenge hosted by Marta from An Italian in the US .

A direct link to weekend cookbook challenge is here.

The theme is "Springtime/Easter" foods.

The WCC is an event hosted by various food blogger and it is based upon a theme. The only catch is you have to use a cookbook or periodical in your collection as inspiration for your recipe. Good luck! I have submitted my past from Thursday; the combination of honey and thyme felt like a perfect combination for Springtime for me.

If you would like to read more about other WCC Challanges take a look at running with tweezers where Tami has an excellent round up of WCC #14. WCCs are a great way to catch up and intrpduce yourself to other fantastic food blogs!

Colorado

2007-03-14T10:41:00.000-04:00

I am heading to Fort Collins, CO for the remainder of the week. Given that Denver, lays claim to the invention of the cheeseburger (The trademark for the name Cheeseburger was awarded in 1935 to Louis Ballast). Who knows what tasty burgers await me?

So my usual post is on Thursdays but I since I will be out of town, why not an early one?

As with most cooks we have a lot of cook books and when I say a lot I mean shelves and shelves of them and as with most home cooks we rarely use them. Last week for dinner it was the usual what to make and we decided to whip out Chuck Williams Simple American Cooking (book is out of print but there is a copy on eBay that I linked to) and make the Baked Chicken with Honey Lemon Glaze.

The recipe is very simple and we substituted skinless chicken breast for the whole chicken cut into pieces.

1 lb boiling onions
I lemon
1/4 cup honey
3 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme or 1 1/2 half dry
2 lbs chicken breast
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tables spoons minced shallot
s/ p to taste
1/2 cup golden raisins (we substituted black raisins when we could not find the golden)

The recipe was wicked simple basically you trim and score the onions bring them to a boil and then simmer for 5 minutes, set aside

Zest the lemon and then add the zest, juice of the lemon , honey and the thyme and set aside

Put the butter and the minced shallot into the baking dish and into the oven 375 until the butter melts. I placed it into the oven while it was pre-heating

S/P the chicken , place in the baking dish and cook for about 10 minutes, remove from oven and flip over the chicken

Coat with the honey mixture and drained onions and cook until done about another 15 minutes or until an instant read thermometer reads 160. The juices should have reduced to form a glaze. If not remove the chicken and put the remaining sauce into a small pot and heat until thickened.

Arrange the chicken and serve.

I would serve this again as it was easy to make and was a big hit. We made our usual salad and a side of asparagus and we were good to go!

Hell Has Frozen Over!

2007-03-09T12:22:00.000-05:00

Seriously has it really come to this?

Rachel Ray is the new pitch person for my beloved Dunkin Donuts. Dunkin Donuts was much better represented with the "Time to make the Donuts" campaign. Fred the Baker was the go to guy as the face of Double D.

The guy has his own section in Wikipedia and though I do enjoy the new additions to the Double D menu, something just does not feel right about saying YUM-O when I drink my Dunkin.

By the way if you are a fan of their ice coffee, you can get a free 16 ounce one on March 21.

YUM-O

Chilly Willy

2007-03-08T15:00:00.000-05:00

So brrr, it is cold lately down right freeze the meat off your bones cold! During weather like this a type of meal that sticks to your bones is downright required. The best sit around and hold something warm meal I know of is chili.

Chili with homemade cheddar cheese biscuits, even better

For chili I make a pretty simple recipe: chili seasoning mix, beef, beans, tomatoes, tomato paste and it takes about a half an hour to make.

For the chili seasoning I make my own mix of a blend of secret and probably some obvious ingredients:

All the dry ingredients are mixed together and it makes it very easy to whip up a batch. If you are interested in the mix, drop me an email and I can send you some.

At the same time I also start to brown about a pound of beef in a stock pot. Once the beef is browned I drain off the remaining fat and add a variety of beans of vegetables that we have in the house.

in this case I added:

1 16 ounce can of black beans
1 16 ounce can of red pinto beans with the liquid
1 16 ounce large can of crushed tomatoes a
1 8 ounce can of tomato sauce
let it simmer for about a half an hour.

While the chili was simmering I got out some backing powder, all purpose flour, salt and sugar and sifted it through a small mesh colander.

Once it was nicely mixed I then cut some butter into the mix and added some milk.

At the end, I tend added some nice shredded cheddar cheese to the mix. Then the whole big doughy goo was formed nicely onto the counter

Now we had a bit of a problem. I don't own a biscuit cutter or an egg ring to cut the biscuits, what to do WHAT TO DO!!!!!!

Well what we do own is a lot of baby bottles that have this nifty rings that are about the correct size to cut biscuits with. Not sure if Avent knows their baby bottles are so handy!

After 25 minutes in the oven- TA DA! all done!

We had some left over brown rice that I used when we platted up the chili. Overall everything was really easy to make and I like having my own chili mix around to control both the amount of salt as well as the heat of the dish.

Sad

2007-03-03T15:22:00.000-05:00

I was unable to post my usual Thursday post this week due to the passing of my Aunt. I packed up quickly and headed to Ohio for the funeral.

It was a long couple of days.

My Aunt was know for many things, a mother, a sister a teacher. I will certainly remember what a fantastic baker she was. My mother, her sister, who passed away 10 years ago was a very good cook, but my Aunt had a natural ability as a baker. Her apple cake and cheese cake are fantastic. The one baked good I will remember her for is her mandell bread. Mandell bread, a twice baked bread much like a biscotti, was highly sought after from my Aunt.

As I look into our pantry and see the container she gave my father and I filled with the twice baked bread I know it will never be filled up again.

Next Thursday we will be past the traditional 7 days of mourning and maybe if I can muster it up I will see if I can make a mandell bread. Once I am done, I will pour a glass of milk and enjoy the bread while thinking of my mom and my aunt together and the wonderful meals that the cook and the baker can make together again.

Carrot Tops

2007-02-22T08:22:00.000-05:00

Last week I wrote about the London Broil we had made for dinner. When it comes to having a vegetable side dish for our dinners it usually follows the standard fare. Items such as broccoli or green beans or usually asparagus when we have steak.

I wanted to have something different and given the marinade on the London Broil some sort of veggie with a little bit to balance everything out.

If you have ever been to Boston or Chicago there is a restaurant called Brasserie Jo. It is a French Brasserie and serves consistent food. Not surprisingly their French Onion soup is fairly killer.

The one item that we always enjoy is these mustard carrots that they serve cold prior to your meal. The plan was to replicate those carrots and serve them hot as a side dish.

Carrots area fairly underrated veggie by most accounts. Despite having a Carrot Museum online where you can email Mr. Carrot a question one does not hear a lot about carrots.

I checked the cook books we have around the house and none had any recipes for mustard carrots so I went to my usual recipe book, Google, to see what I could locate. I got back 1,240,000 results for mustard carrots.

I read through the first few dozen or so recipes and settled on what seemed to be the basic elements:

Lots of BUTTER whooo hoooo!
Carrots of course
Mustard, I used a whole grain Dijon (which I would not use again)
Brown sugar
Parsley to garnish

Having made sugar glazed carrots a bunch of times I started with the same basic way:

Some butter in the pan

I then added some roughly julienned carrots (I know you can't roughly julienne something either it is julienned or it is not but work with me here) once the butter melted.

Once the butter had coated the carrots and the carrots had softened just a little bit, about 5 minutes over medium heat, I added about 2-3 tablespoons of the mustard. Once that had been incorporated, I added about one tablespoon of brown sugar.

Another minute or two until the desired softness was achieved.

We like ours a little crunchy.

Then I added the parsley and ta da! All done.

Overall I thought this was wicked easy and the wife said it was serve this to company. However, the sweetness of the Dijon mustard was a bit of a put off. At the table we added a bit of fresh ground black pepper to offset the sweetness of the mustard. Additionally, while we liked the way the cracked mustard looked on the dish, the little bits tended to get stuck in our teeth.

Next time I will probably go with a good quality 'plain' mustard and then add tarragon if I want some sweetness to the dish. I add tarragon to the compound butter I make so it would most likely be very complimentary.

Moooooo

2007-02-20T14:48:00.000-05:00

Every week I have sent to my mail box a tasty little teaser from Lobel's of New York. If you have not heard of Lobel's it is consistently ranked as the best butcher shop in the US. Additionally, they have a very good mail order service. While I would like to buy something from them I would need to take out a second mortgage to afford it.

The point of all this is Alton Brown probably does the best job of explaining cuts of beef and how to cook them of any TV Chef. Seriously, who would you trust with your beef buying decisions? A guy standing next to another man in a cow costume or someone who has a smile like this?

I hope that Food Network has a dermatologist on retainer with all the Botox they must go through.

So today in my email I got a great break down of all the different cuts of beef. Given last week's London Broil post this seem like a natural follow-up.

So here it goes courtesy of Lobel's of New York:

"At one time or another, you may have heard someone say, “I don’t know ____, but I know what I like.” Fill in the blank with the noun of your choosing—art, music, cars, fashion, anything.

Ok, how about inserting “meat?”

Casual carnivores may be able to get their favorite cut in their favorite restaurant. But, put that same person in a restaurant in another region of the country or in an ethnic restaurant or market, and he or she could be lost for words—literally.

No doubt about it—the nomenclature of food can be confusing.

When it comes to deciphering the various names for cuts of meat, well it’s almost as challenging as giving job instructions to the workers building the Tower of Babel.

Common Problems in Meat Lexicon

There are the seeming inconsistencies in names of certain cuts. For example, pork butt is cut from the shoulder. (It’s the rear portion when a whole shoulder is subdivided.)

Regional variations mix with trade names and anatomical references. For example, a New York strip, shell steak, Kansas City strip, and top-loin steak all refer to the same cut.

Outright misnomers abound: A Delmonico steak is a bone-in strip steak, not a boneless rib steak.

In addition, butchers in different countries have different techniques for breaking down an animal carcass into retail cuts. And so, a cut that may be common in France or England, for example, may not have an exact counterpart in U.S. butcher shops and supermarkets.

And then you may run into variants of the same cut in ethnic markets and restaurants in the U.S. For example:
- What’s called skirt steak in the U.S. is bavette in France and churrasco in Argentina.
- In France, a cote de boeuf is a double-thick, bone-in rib steak with a single rib bone attached. In the U.S., take the same steak and french the rib bone, and you’ve got a cowboy steak.

So What's a Meat-Lover to Do?

In the midst of all this, how do you become a more knowledgeable consumer of meat and the cuts that best satisfy your tastes?


1. Chuck 2. Flanken Ribs 3. Rib 4. Back Ribs 5. Short Loin 6. Tenderloin 7. Porterhouse 8. Sirloin 9. Round	10. Rump Roast 11. Round Steak 12. Hind Steak 13. Flank 14. Flank Steak Rolls 15. Short Plate 16. Brisket 17. Fore Shank

A good place to start is Lobel’s Guide to Meat where you’ll find specific names for various cuts, as well as some of the common variations for specific cuts.

Another way to keep from getting distracted by the differences of names and labels is to recognize the similarities among various cuts, based on a couple fundamentals of mammalian anatomy.

The anatomical layout of beef cattle, veal calves, lambs, and pigs isn’t very different. Basically, each type of animal has a fore quarter (front end) and a hind quarter (back end).

By far, the most popular, tender, and premium cuts of any type of meat come from what’s known as “the middles.” Together that’s the rib and the loin—the back part of the fore quarter and the front part of the hind quarter.

Recognizing the Different Cuts

The same cuts that are called steaks in beef are called chops in lamb, veal, and pork.

Take a look at bone-in rib steaks and chops—they differ in size, but not much in shape, no matter whether it's beef, veal, lamb, or pork.

Similarly, what’s called a Porterhouse steak in beef is a Porterhouse veal chop or a loin lamb chop.

This cut comes from the loin or short loin and has two parts: the filet (round portion) and the loin (long portion), separated by a T-shaped bone. Separate meat from bone in a beef steak, and you’ve got a filet mignon and a strip steak.

Notice the similarities among beef, veal, and lamb.

How can you experience all these cuts?

We've put together new sampler packages of these cuts, which will be available for a short time. Three sizes of packages range in servings from a sampler for 2 to 4 adults, to enough to take your favorite group of friends on a taste extravaganza.

Try the Porterhouse Samplers, which include USDA Prime Porterhouse Steaks, Veal Porterhouse Chops, and All-Natural Lamb Loin Chops.

Or try the Bone-In Rib Steak Samplers, which include USDA Prime Bone-In Rib Steaks, Veal Rib Chops, and All-Natural Lamb Rib Chops.

For your dining pleasure,
The Lobel Family
1-877-783-4512"

London Broil Calling

2007-02-15T09:45:00.000-05:00

London broil is calling to the faraway towns
Now dinner is declared, and come sit down

We were in a carnivorous mood the other night for dinner and were not sure what to make. The usual suspects such as new your strip or steak tips were not appealing. We have been down that tasty road often and wanted to take a new exit.

What about London Broil?

London Broil has a lot of things going for it; it is an inexpensive cut of beef, it works well on the grill or a broiler and it also takes a marinade well.

The down side is that it can be chewy and if cut poorly it is a mess to eat and while it takes a marinade well it does need to be marinaded. If you want to eat NOW, London Broil is not the cut to go with, but it is tasty!

I made a simple marinade of soy sauce, olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic powder and some dried mined onion. This worked well since it was based upon what we happened to have in the pantry.

Then after marinading for a few hours, off onto a broiler rack (about 6 inches from the broiler) for about 25 minutes or until an instant read thermometer reads between 130ºF - 140ºF then out to rest on a cutting board.

The London Broil was sliced at a 45º angle and the end result looked like this

To be honest most of the end result was pure luck! I mean the middle was perfectly pink just a nice ring of yummy goodness on the outside. Given the time to marinade is a certain make again.

I will let Jeff from C for Cooking, post up the You Tube video of the Clash if work lets him surf blogs this week.

In and Out

2007-02-10T14:19:00.000-05:00

So seriously folks, what can be better then combining probably the best fast food restaurant with one of the greatest movies of all times, The Big Lebowski. There is an annual event called the Lebowski Fest and when I did a GIS for In-N-Out Burger to start this post, the above photo came up.

How cool is that?

A few weeks ago I posted about my trip out to Cali. I mentioned dinning at In-N-Out Burger and T.W. Barritt of Culinary Types fame mentioned that he had never eaten there and was looking forward to a review. Since I missed Thursday's post due to being a a sales kickoff event this past week, I figured it was a good time to catch up and give T.W. the run down.

First, I know that he was in Vegas a while back and he could of hit up one of the three locations out there. If he had, this is what we would of experienced-

The last time I ate at In-N-Out Burger was probably ten years ago when I was again in California for business. The hotel I was staying at for 2 weeks was across the street from an In-N-Out Burger. I remember going through the drive through and ordering a cheese burger, fries and a strawberry milk shake. I was hooked!

They had me at 'please drive ahead'

Despite this love affair, my travels to California are often framed around a specific purpose. A trade show, a serious of meetings at corporate etc and all of those usually include eating dinner with the people I work with. That is fine and I have had some really nice meals that I have not had to pay for but I did miss getting a cheese burger, fries and a strawberry milk shake.

This is what you will find at In-N-Out Burger. First the menu is very simple. Burgers, Fries, Shakes, sodas etc. Fairly standard fare. There is also a 'secret menu' that expands to a variety of combinations and of course you can do the pickle tomato what ever.

I order my cheese burger with cooked onions, some special sauce, pickles, tomatoes and lettuce. Having worked at McDonalds (yes I did thank you), the main difference in that the burger's at In-N-Out Burger are cooked fresh meaning no frozen patties. When they cook the onions and then build that burger all the yummy goodness oozes together.

The fries my friends, well they are really what sets the place apart. Back in the day at McDonalds, the fries come in these big brown bags and you fill this rotating basket holder with the fries. The fries then thaw out during the course of the morning , day hour whatever. The fries go in frozen and cook for three minutes. Much to the annoyance of family and friends, if I see old fries at McDonalds, I always ask for new to be made. I would rather wait 3 minutes then have some crappy old fries.

At In-N-Out Burger, the fries are made fresh. Made fresh as in cut the potatoes there and make them. That is some serious french fry love going on!

The shakes are also fantastic. Not too think, not fake milk, just the right balance.

In closing, it seems that the success of In-N-Out Burger has a lot to do with the old fashioned basics of business. Make a few things really well and do it with a smile. I highly , highly recommend visiting one the next time you are out West.

Stuffed

2007-02-03T14:50:00.000-05:00

I was at the grocery store and in the mood for something different to make for dinner. Having been away all week left me in the need of some kitchen time. However, I did have some criteria that needed to be meet. Dinner had to be a) something I could have leftovers of and b) something that I would be able to make in a hour.

Stuffed shells

Ahh the perfect thing for dinner: stuffed shells. It has pasta, has meat, has cheese, freezes well, reheats well and easy to make. Seriously could this get any easier or annoying (maybe if I was Rachel Ray)

I sort of made this up as I went along but here are the basic ingredients:

- 1lb groud turkey
- 1 16 oz can of Muir Glen Crushed Tomatoes with Basil
- Half a jar of Prego with Mushrooms
- 1 box of Barilla large shells ( I picked Barilla because that was what was in front of me)
- 1 bag of Sargento shredded mozzarella cheese (again because that was what was in front of me)
- half a 32 oz container of Sorrento whole milk ricotta cheese (could of gone with the 15 oz)
- some parsley, oregano, salt, pepper, basil
- fresh grated parmigiano reggiano cheese
- 1 package frozen spinach
- 2 Roche brothers sweet Italian chicken sausage links

- Put pot of salted water on to boil
- Brown the turkey with some salt and pepper and set aside ( I do have photos but they are sort of gross, if you really want them let me know), then set aside
- Cut up the sausage in chunks and then cooked till through in the same pan, then set aside
-Microwave according to directions the spinach and drain until dryish
-Mix the sausage, grounded turkey and spinach together with your hands (again, I do have photos but they are sort of gross, if you really want them let me know)
- Add about half the ricotta cheese to the sausage, turkey and spinach mix. Add seasoning to taste.
-Drain pasta and shells
- In a 9x12 dish, pour the crushed tomatoes over the bottom just to give the shells something to sit on.

- While still warm, put as much of the mixture into each shells as you can. In my dish, I can fit rows of 4 together so over all, I can do 4 rows of 4 with 2 additional shells tucked in at the end. it is about half the box of shells. It should look something frighteningly like this.

Once all the little fellas are comfortably tucked into their beds, I then cover them each with a little of the Prego and the shredded mozzarella.

Then into the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes or so.

I sprinkled a little bit of freshly grated parmigiano reggiano cheese on top before serving. The end result was very very tasty.

What I liked about making this was that it falls into a classic friends and family category. Even if you know vegetarians you could do a half and half with little to no extra effort.

Da Bears!

2007-02-02T20:42:00.000-05:00

Sorry all, I am late with my post this week as I have been swamped with work. Don't you hate it when work gets in the way of life.

When I do dig out, I have some pretty good postings. We made london broil, mustard carrots, chicken cutlets and some stuffed shells creation I came up with in the store.

So here is to the Colts loosing-

Burgers!

2007-01-24T19:34:00.000-05:00

So this week I am in California. Fortunately my schedule permitted me to enjoy an excellent meal at my friends house. They made roast lamb with couscous and a really nice Shiraz for wine.

Dinner was delish and if it was not for being beat from my trip and the sinus infection I would of have asked for seconds.

Last night we had dinner in downtown Mountain View at a restaurant called the Cantankerous Fish. Good food, horrible Flash website. For dinner, I started with a grapefurit, walnut, avacado and mixed greens salad, delish! This was followed by seared bay scallops over pasta with blanched spinach. The scallops were tasty, but the spinach was a bit over blanched.

Tonight, I am planning on hitting up IN-N-OUT Burger for dinner. Since I will be flying tomorrow I won't be able to provide an update on just how tasty my burger was but expect a post about how delish it was soon after I get home!

I can mash potato

2007-01-18T13:52:00.000-05:00

Well I can mash potato
Well I can do the twist
Woh tell me baby
Do you like it like this

A sinus infection has robbed me of most of my energy to cook. What I wanted to eat was something warm and comforting and required little effort to make.

hmm...mashed potatoes!

So while this is not the most exciting post it certainly is a tasty one. We had four red potatoes (or new potatoes), some butter and milk in the house. A quick peal and cut into fours and away the little fellas went into some salted cold water to be boiled. (as evidence to my lack of focus, I put them in whole and then had to take them out to cut them up again)

I boiled them until they fell off of a fork when picked up. To this I added about a tablespoon of butter and maybe a 1/4 of a cup of milk. We have a Kitchen Aid mixe r as well as an old school electric hand mixer but for small amounts a 12 year old Braun Immersion Blender works great.

I added some more milk until I got a 'mashed potato' consistency.

Since I also had some left over Mexican cheese blend from tacos over the weekend. I added the cheese to the finished products and I ate away.

It was good for about three bites and then I was finished with it. Nothing wrong with it, just a bit too much for me when I was not feeling fantastic. Off to California next week and I plan to bring along the camera in case there are more photos of baby pigs to be taken.

Mmmm Steak

2007-01-11T12:55:00.000-05:00

My kind of diet. Add pizza, nachos and maybe some mango and we would be almost there. This past Saturday we were out and about and decided what would be better for dinner then some lobster tail and....?

Um? anyone anyone Beuller?

Fillet Mignon

Sounds like a pretty tasty dinner to me.

We got the sous chef a special meal of Chicken Nuggets from Ian's Natural Foods so everyone was good to go.

The meal was very simple so I won't trouble you all with the specific details of how we made it other then this was what we had:

- baby carrots (not the bag types these are actual baby carrots with the greens and all) and asparagus

- fillet mignon

- 2 lobster tails

- 2 crab cakes

- a few shrimp for the boss (shrimp cocktail, I enjoy shrimp, not a huge shrimp cocktail fan)

- salad (tomatoes, dried cranberries, skinned cucumber, Crane Crest dressing)

AND LOTS AND LOTS OF BUTTER!!!

butter for the lobster tail, butter for the crab cakes, butter for the fillet mignon. I did chase the meal down with a nice Lipitor so I think it balances out.

The carrots and asparagus were cut up and cooked over medium heat in some butter and salt until their color was bright.

The crab cakes, lobster tail and shrimp were purchased at Captain Marden's Seafoods in Wellesley, MA. The crab cakes were browned on each side in a little bit of olive oil and butter. The shrimp were pre-cooked as was the lobster tail.

The fillet mignon was sprayed with Pam and then salted on each side with kosher salt and some fresh ground black pepper. Then pan seared for 4-5 minutes each side (on my stove) for medium rare or until the instant read thermometer reaches 130°F.

Dinner was delisch!!

Blog News

2007-01-08T15:16:00.000-05:00

From deep within the Sauces and Stuff secret cave comes this blog update.

After the New Year is as good as time as any to post an update about Sauces and Stuff. I have added a few new components to the blog and adjusted others. For all my general frustrations with Blogger. The new version of Blogger allows for changes much faster then the prior version.

Here are the basic changes-

Google Adsense. I have changed the layout of the ads on the blog. Feedback has been generally mixed regarding the ads on the blog. There are now just two ad areas on Sauces and Stuff.

The right hand side of the blog

The Google search box

I felt that the search box was a less obtrusive ad format then that banner ads. Additionally, the constant ad of how to loose 20lbs seemed not to be consistent with the purpose of my blog. I have several frustrations with Google Adsense and feeding up ads that have no relation to the blog is certainly one of them. If you are so inclined, I do appreciate the clicks on the ads.

An other component I added was the ability to subscribe to Sauces and Stuff

Basically you enter your email and then you will receive an email to confirm the subscription. Once that has been done, then you will receive email updates when I update Sauces and Stuff.

I have also added a few additional blogs that I read to my link section. These are the food and cooking blogs I read every week. All of them have different feels and different approaches that I appreciate. If they have ads on them, I would like to suggest you click on their ads as well. They are arranged alphabetically and when I find new blogs I enjoy, I will add them to this section.

Overall I have been pleased with my efforts on Sauces and Stuff. In 2006 I did 32 posts and certainly hope to increase that this year. I also plan to start some contests as well as some other ideas I have been working on.

It took me a long time to get my act together but the feedback I have received on Sauces and Stuff has been positive.

Pizza Pizza

2007-01-04T09:00:00.000-05:00

It is a toss up between popcorn and pizza for which food I could eat everyday. As any good parent should I am trying to pass my food cravings along so I have a partner in crime. Several weeks ago we decided to make some pizza at home.

My usual method is to make the pizza on the grill outside. One does not need a pizza stone or anything fancy like that and the pizza is fantastic. I was reluctant to try it inside since the results have usually been so so , but I also wanted something we could do together.

We bought ready made pizza dough. As you can see below my able bodied assistant was able to get right into rolling out the dough. Most grocery stores have bags of pizza dough in the bakery section. The downside is that ready made dough is usually harder to work with since it has been worked over a bit. The upside is you can get to work right away which with kids is the key.

I put some flour on the counter top and she was able to start rolling out the pizza. Once we got the shape we wanted the next step was to bake one side of the pizza.

To do this I had my sous chef dust a cookie tray with some corn meal,

then we put the pizza dough on the cookie sheet on the top rack under the broiler.

and we broiled it until one side was nice and brown and cooked.

This will become the bottom or no-topping side of the pizza. From here on out it is a matter of what toppings you would like on your pizza. We went with half cheese and half meatball for the pizza.

A little bit of sauce-

A little bit of cheese-

A few meatballs and some more cheese-

Back under the broiler right on the rack until the toppings were melted.

Yummy!

The whole thing took about 30 minutes and it was really something that the whole family could do. I would do and have done it again several times.

You stink!

2006-12-28T10:15:00.000-05:00

So a friend of mine who reads Sauces and Stuff commented to me that for a blog about Sauces there are very few recipes about Sauces. While he will remain anonymous, I did point out that it is Sauces and Stuff not Sauces Only. So just for him, here is a very stinky to make but very tasty Sweet and Sour Sauce recipe.

Also many thanks to my new readers and comments!

If you google for sweet and sour sauce recipe you get 1,420,000 results. All of them are basically the same with a few variations on the sweet component. Here is my version-

1/3 cup of sugar
1/3 cup of white champagne vinegar
1/3 cup of water
4 teaspoons of corn starch (dissolved in 4 teaspoons of water)
1/3 cup of apricot preserves (or a small jar)

-Bring sugar, water and vinegar to a boil (the stinky part).

-Remove from heat and stir in two teaspoons of the dissolved corn starch, place back on the heat and bring to a boil. (be careful as boiled over anything with corn starch is messy to clean up)

-Once the mixture is brought back to the boil, immediately reduce the heat to low and continue to cook for about 5 minutes or until thickened.

-If you feel the sauce is not getting thick enough you can add additional corn starch one teaspoon at a time until the desired thickness is achieved. (the sauce will thicken naturally in the fridge and as it settles).

-Add all of the preserves and continue to cook for about another 5 minutes.

If you look closely at the photo below you can see the high marks on the sauce pot where the sauce has reduced by almost half.

I store this overnight prior to serving and serve it at room temperature. Unless you have a Vent-A-Hood in your house, I suggest opening the windows and making this the day before. This is very tasty but very stinky!

That is just nuts!

2006-12-20T21:21:00.000-05:00

For all you holiday nuts out there, here is a quick and easy way to make some plain old nuts into fancy uptown nuts. One can use any type of nuts I picked almonds. They have a nice crunch to them and they hold up well to cooking.

This recipe is good for about 2 1/2 pounds of nuts which just happens to be the size of the bag of nuts we got at Costco.

2 teaspoons of sea salt
4 teaspoons of cumin
4 teaspoons of ground coriander seed
1 teaspoon of ground cardamom (had to go to Whole Foods for that)
6 tablespoons olive oil (give or take)

Over low heat for about 30 minutes heat the almonds in the olive oil until they are well coated.

Take them off the heat and toss with the mix from above. Let cool and serve!
One variation suggested from the other cook in the house. Set aside some with out the spice mix. The almonds actually taste pretty darn good all by themselves.

No Soup For You!

2006-12-13T20:23:00.000-05:00

Ah yes the cold days of Winter. At some point they should arrive in New England. Wednesday was almost balmy and in the 50s. Typically this time of year we bust out the beef vegetable soup recipe and despite the weather, like bears going to hibernate, we felt the seasonal call of soup.

Beef / Vegetable Soup

8 cups of water
6 carrots
1 head or so of cabbage shredded
10 oz bag of corn
10 oz bag of green beans
4 or so stalks of celery
1 large and in charge onion
1 1/2 of beef chunks (usually called stew beef in the grocery)
3 or so potatoes
1 large can of stewed tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste
parsley
egg noodles (to serve on the side)

In a large pot bring 8 cups of water to boil and add the beef, celery and carrots. Reduce to simmer and continue to simmer for 2 hours. Skim the soup and stir occasionally.

Bring back to a boil add remaining ingredients except for parsley. Reduce to simmer and continue to simmer for an additional hour, add parsley prior to serving and serve on top of the egg noodles.

Distracted

2006-12-08T13:20:00.000-05:00

Like a guy watching his dog dressed as a banana dance and sing "It's peanut butter jelly time!!!"
I have been distracted the past few weeks.

After Thanksgiving works picks up a bit and at home we do all the decorating around the house. Regardless of the reason the blog has taken a hit with the updates, sorry about all of that.

Additionally, I have been toying with the overall layout of the site. Let me know your thoughts-

Last week we had my cousin over for dinner and we made skillet lasagn a.

I got the recipe from watching America's Test

Kitchen (the TV show from Cooks Illustrated)

The basic concept is that instead of baking the lasagna one makes a free form lasagna by cooking everything in one pan. I was not thrilled with the way it came out but it was tasty enough to make again. This photo was taken towards the end when I had placed the spoonfuls of ricotta cheese on the lasagna.

Here is a similar recipe that I took off of Cooks.com for the skillet lasagn a.

1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. cream style cottage cheese
1 c. Mozzarella cheese
1 tbsp. parsley
2 1/2 c. tomatoes
Chopped onion
1 (16 oz.) can spaghetti sauce
3 or 4 uncooked lasagna noodles
1 tbsp. basil
1 tsp. salt
1/2 c. water

Brown the ground beef and onion in a 350 degree skillet and drain excess grease. Cover with half the spaghetti sauce, all the cottage cheese and uncooked noodles (single layer). Add the remaining spaghetti sauce, seasonings, tomatoes, and water. Cover and cook at 225 to 250 degrees for 30 minutes until the noodles are tender. Top with Mozzarella cheese and cook 10 minutes longer.

The problems that we had with the skillet lasagn a was that the recipe was a bit too soupy. I would cut back on the liquids but overall I would make it again.

Turkey Lurkey

2006-11-29T20:51:00.000-05:00

! ITS TURKEY EATING TIME !

(or at least it was this time last week)

No that is not a photo of our Thanksgiving. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

We had my wife's family in from out of town and it was nice to be hosting Thanksgiving rather then heading out.

We made standard fare, pie, rolls, etc. For a turkey we went with Plainville Farms Turkey. We have been using them for years and it is the best tasting Turkey I have had. I dug up my trusty copy of Cooks Illustrated from December 2002 and used their "How to Roast a 20 pound Turkey" recipe.

It has never failed me and everyone raves. If you want the recipe just leave a comment and I can post it.

Here are some assorted snap shots from Thanksgiving.
(company was very shy so no live shots posted)

prepping for the Turkey -
carrots, lemon, thyme, onion and celery

prepping for the stuffing -
onion, celery, carrots
(sense a trend here?)

prepping for the Turkey -
roasting pan, salt and pepper, trash bag?
(Tom is in the bag)

Formaggio Kitchen is the best cheese shop around. However, living in the burbs now we frequent Whole Foods's Cheese Shop. As much as we prefer to support local business, driving into the South End from the burbs is not a lot of fun.

There is also a very fine cheese shop in Wellesley called creatively enough,
"Cheese Shop of Wellesley".

Guest of honor-

Between 170 and 180 on the instant read thermometer.

The table sans company-
(notice the wine is already going)

All and all Thanksgiving was very enjoyable. It was a great time for family to come together and no one went away hungry. That day as with everyday, we remain thankful for our family and friends, the people that care most for each other.

Happy Thanksgiving

2006-11-22T19:49:00.000-05:00

Things have been busy this week getting ready for Thanksgiving. We are hosting this year so lots to do.

We did make pizza one night, I just have not had a chance to post it.

Lots of photos will be taken so we will see if the quality of the photos increases or decrease based upon the amount of wine I consume.

Enjoy-

You don't make friends with salad

2006-11-20T14:18:00.000-05:00

We have salads sometimes several times a week.

Big deal you say?

Very big in fact, these are not salads as a side, these are salads as the meal.

We usually go with what ever we have in the pantry and refrigerator:

-almonds
-apples
-avocado
-cheese of some sort
-oranages
-walnuts
-eggs
-chicken
etc etc - you get the idea.

This was a recent salad that had all the usual suspects in addition to a fried egg on top. I tend to like my eggs less runny so this is a shot of my salad. Lettuce, cucumbers, avocado, tomatoes, walnuts, apple, Bell and Evans Chicken Breats and of course the egg.

It was a very quick and very enjoyable dinner. Even the eggs danced

Also quick programing note. I changed my template to this new one. The old one was not doing it for me any more. Let me know your thoughts.

Fried Rice

2006-11-16T17:03:00.000-05:00

Any fan of the cartoon series , Fighting Foodons, knows that dishes served can win the battle. Much like an animated version of Iron Chef, Fighting Foodons pits dishes against each other in a battle of good versus evil.

It was in this vein that I whipped up some chicken fried rice after the Pats miserable loss to the Jets this past Sunday.

Fried rice is very easy to make. That said I did take some shortcuts as I had a bunch of other stuff we needed to get done around the house. The basic key is to have some day old rice since fresh rice, while tasting fine, will make your fried rice a sticky mess. We had some left over from the day before so I made a small amount to add to the existing amount.

We do have a rice cooker but I did not want to dig it out

That was short cut one. Short cut two was to use a bag of Cascadian Farm frozen vegetable blend rather then go with fresh veggies. I did add some fresh carrots we had in the house as well as some canned water chestnuts.

The third short cut was to cook the chicken in the over while I did other stuff rather then cook the chicken in the pan. I did however, mix the veggies with the rice in the large fry pan. I cooked the rice and veggie combo with a little oil a very small (about half a teaspoon) of sesame oil and some low salt soy sauce.
.
Once I was satisfied with the overall look and taste, I cut up the chicken added it the the mix and seasoned accordingly. Finally I took an egg that I had previously lightly scrambled and added it to the mix. The finished dish looked like this.

I microwaved some frozen Cascadian Farm Edamame in a small corning ware dish covered with water for about 5 minutes, drained the water and tossed with some sea salt.

Dinner was served.

Cutting Edge

2006-11-15T15:19:00.000-05:00

In preparation for some serious cutting next week I got my knives sharpened. Years ago my parents bought me a set of knives for my birthday. After checking out a whole bunch of them I settled on Lamson & Goodnow's LamsonSharp knives. I have been very happy with them. Knives are a very personal thing and for me the balance and heft are great. The problem with them is that they are a bitch to sharpen. LamsonSharp has a program where you can send back the knives and they will sharpen them at no charge. Having done this, I never felt the knives were that sharp.

How do you know if you knives are sharp?

You should be able to hold a piece of paper and without pressure, slice the paper with the knife. My knives have never been able to do this upon return from the company. I finally brought them to Kitchen Arts in Boston. If you are not from Boston or care not to make it in you can mail the knives to them and they will sharpen them up and ship them back to you.

For 23 dollars, my knives can back a day latter in tip top shape. It is hard to see from this photo but there is a nice , even and consistent new edge to the blade. I highly recommend getting your knives done professionally.

As you may already know a sharpening steel is not for sharpening your knives at all. The steel merely realigns the edge of the blade. An entertaining and informative overview of the hows and whys of knife sharpening is by Alton Brown.

Shazam!

2006-11-09T09:35:00.000-05:00

I love Gatorade and could drink it every day. The stuff that makes it so darn tasty is also the stuff that makes it high in calories. Granted that is sort of the point, if you are working out it is no big deal.

If I was to create my own energy drink, I would call it Shazam and it would probably only appeal to fans of the campy early 70's tv show. I came across a recipe for a DIY energy drink from the blog Yaniverse. It is wicked easy to make and you could swap out the tea bags to customize your own flavors-

reposted from Yaniverse-

EnerT Ingredients (32 oz or about 1 liter):
2 Tea Bags
6 level teaspoon sugar (24 grams)
A pinch of salt (0.5 grams)
2 oz lemon juice (about 55 grams)
30 oz boiling water

Contains:
100 calories
500 mg Sodium
60mg of Potassium (from the lemon juice)
Caffeine varies, est 100mg-200mg caffeine (depending on the tea used and infusion duration)

Estimated Cost:
Lemon juice: $0.10
2 Tea Bags: $0.06
Sugar, Salt, water, etc: negligible

Compare to 32 oz Gatorade:
200 calories
440mg Sodium
120mg Potassium
No caffeine
Cost: $1.29

Mustard

2006-11-08T16:17:00.000-05:00

What started the whole sauce thing for me was my affinity for making both honey mustard and hot mustard dipping sauces for the holiday parties we have every year.

These sauces were huge hits. From there it was why don't we quit our day jobs and take on Stonewall Kitchens!

Well it has not happened yet but one never knows.

While I was in NY this week a friend of mine commented that lately the blog was more "Stuff then Sauces'. So this post goes out to him-

Hot Mustard Sauce-

1/4 cup Yellow Mustard
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon of water (or so)

Mix the dry mustard with the white wine vinegar and water until a paste is created.
Add the remaining ingredients.
You can mix more of the dry mustard mix and add it to the remaining amount to taste

After the compound butter, I have decided not to include any photos of sauces like this. The key I have found with any sauce is to start with a base and then adjust according to taste or mood. More importantly what do those little hot dogs hold up well to?

Welcome to the Rock

2006-11-03T15:23:00.000-05:00

Last week I was in San Francisco and from my hotel I could actually see Alcatraz which is pretty cool even for someone who goes to California all the time.

I rarely bring my camera on trips for work but I did this time. I took a variety of photos along my walk to the meetings in the morning.

My typical breakfast -

My walk took me through China town and these scenes should look familiar if you have ever been through China town in Boston or New York.

Mmmm chicken and other animals lacking heads.

I hope you like your pork fresh!

We had dinner one night at North Beach Restaurant. Great Italian food, we had the Carpaccio & Home-Cured Prosciutto - Combination Plate as well as salads for starters. I had the Spaghetti Carbonara and my two collegues had the sole special. Dinner was very good but the amazing thing was that we were in and out with drinks and desert in a hour! The service was very much chop chop. Great food but a tad bit rushed.

I wanted to go here but it was not open. I love the play on words-

I am in New York next week and certainly appreciate some out of the way recommendations.

BOO!

2006-11-01T17:35:00.000-05:00

Nothing says timely like a Halloween post two days late. For some reason Blogger was timing out when I was trying to upload photos the past few days. That is why this post is a few days late.

This past weekend, like so many other people, we carved our pumpkin. While we never have roasted them before, we decided to roast the pumpkin seeds. The recipe is painfully simple.

-Collect and clean the stringy stuff off the pumpkin seeds
-Give a light spray with Pam (some recipes call for butter or lots and lots of oil)
-Salt to taste (or use other spices, cayenne pepper, paprika whatever)
-Spread in one even layer and place in the oven at 300 degrees until golden brown (maybe 30 minutes)

That is it, our course I ate most of them that night

Mmm yummy, tasted really good with a Post Road Pumpkin Ale

Vote yes on 1

2006-10-30T11:39:00.000-05:00

With 7 days left until the general elections in Massachusetts, I wanted to advocate for a ballot initiative that will be voted upon on next Tuesday, November 3rd. For those of you from out of state , Massachusetts has some very strict liquor laws. Several towns are 'dry towns'. In fact, the town where I live just recently allowed liquor licenses for restaurants but will not allow any package (packy) stores (liquor stores). Some towns are even stricter and do not allow any liquor or package licenses at all.

Voting Yes on Question 1 would allow towns and cities to license the sale of wine only in grocery stores. One can read more about it at Wine at Grocery Stores. There is significant pressure and misleading ads that are supported largely by the liquor distributor lobby in Massachusetts. The same lobby that in effect killed the ability to allow instate shipment of wine (yes you can get some shipped in, but the law is so strict as to make it prohibitive).

Regardless of how you choose to vote on other issues, this ballot initiative makes a lot of sense. For example, several Whole Foods in Cambridge, Massachusetts already sell wine in their stores. While you are voting for yes on 1, I would also encourage you to join Free the Grapes!.

Free the Grapes is a Free the Grapes! is a national, grassroots coalition of consumers, wineries and retailers who seek to remove restrictions in states that still prohibit consumers from purchasing wines directly from wineries and retailers.

Here is to having a good drink with friends!

Going back to Cali

2006-10-23T19:50:00.000-04:00

I don't think so

A little known fact about me , outside of my close friends, is that in college I was a huge rap fan. This continues as a hidden addiction to this day. I am talking old school not the stuff that is played today. Serve me up a big spoon full of "back in the day buffet" and I am good to go.

I will be in California this week and will most likely miss posting. I am bringing my camera, so if work lets me out of the conference center, I intend to take some photos.

Compounded

2006-10-21T16:16:00.000-04:00

Steaks are on the menu tonight and aside from a simple treatment of kosher salt and fresh ground pepper a compound butter is a great addition. Goggle has 1,730,000 hits for compound butter! That is a lot of butter being spread around.

Here is my recipe for the go to butter in our house. It is even good on backed potatoes.

-butter
-Dijon mustard
-Worcestershire sauce
-Tarragon

In my exacting measurements the amounts are basically as follows-
-a big dollop of mustard (probably a tablespoon)
-a splash or two of Worcestershire sauce (probably a 1/2 teaspoon or so)
-a good pinch of dried Tarragon (probably a teaspoon or so)

If you prefer it sweet go heavy on the Tarragon, if you prefer some bit go heavy (gently) on the Worcestershire sauce and I have found that the mustard amount tends to remain constant.

Assuming the butter is already soft, I mush the butter and the ingredients up in a bowl or cup with two spoons. I use the spoons because they are easier to push the butter back into the working cup then using a fork and having half the butter stick to the tines. The whole mush will look something disgusting like the photo below.

From here,depending upon how fancy you want to get, there are a few options. You can put the whole mess into a piece of wax paper and then roll it up like a hot dog. Wrap the tube with saran wrap and place into the freezer. Then prior to guests arriving you can cut it into little butter slices.

What I usually do is to put the whole mess into a zip lock bag and then use the bag to mush the stuff around some more. Once it is all mushed up I snip off the end of the bag (you could also get some icing tips and make fancy little butter swirls) and squeeze it into a small glass butter cup, smooth the top over and serve.

This is one of those posting that looks way better in person. I saved everyone the horror of seeing it squeezed out of the zip lock. As Google can attest to there are tremendous amount of variations of compound butter. Find one that works for you.

Rub a dub dub

2006-10-20T17:11:00.000-04:00

For a blog that is primarily supposed to be about sauces, I have written very little about them. So here is an end of the week post that covers a close cousin of sauces, barbecue rubs.

3 tablespoons chili powder (for meat)
3 tablespoons rosemary (for poultry)
2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons paprika
2 teaspoons crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 clove garlic, minced

Generously coat prior to grilling or broiling. For poultry , I like to coat with a barbecue sauce for the last minute of two prior to serving. Since barbecue sauces have a high sugar content it is important to put it on at the end to reduce burning and flair ups.

If you are truly barbecuing 'slow and low' you probably don't need a rub recipe from me!

Loin cloth

2006-10-19T10:31:00.000-04:00

Nothing says marital bliss like a huge pig at your wedding

I love Google image search (gis). When I start a post the first thing I do is hit gis and see what I can come up with. That usually sets the tone for me. If you gis roast pig you get 13,900 images. In the first page you get the normal roast pig photos but you also get one from the wedding, which is a bit strange.

While I have always wanted to do the whole pig roast it honestly sort of freaks me out, so I stick with making a nice roast pork loin. So if your idea of a good time is to Christin your marriage with a nice pig let's Git-R-Done!

The meal was rather straight forward and had two themes to it: apple and roasting:

Salad with apples and walnuts
Homemade applesauce
Roast pork loin
Roasted red potatoes
Roasted asparagus

The apple sauce can be made the day before when you brine the pork. The potatoes, the asparagus and the pork loin all go into the same oven, so to borrow Ron Popeil's catch phrase, you set it and forget it!

Starting 24 hours before you need to brine the pork. I won't go over that again so if you missed it you can read the post here.

I bought the pork loin at Whole Foods near us. They have two options: an insanely priced pork tenderloin and a moderately priced pork loin. I would go with the pork loin, the cost per pound is much less and at Whole Foods, they already have the pork loin trimmed and tied.

I have no problem trimming and tying the roast myself, but it does save a bit of time. That is one pretty pig above! Here are two more views:

If you notice there is some fat on the bottom of the loin. This is fine and actually I choose to leave it on. When I prep the loin to serve I do trim it off. Even with the brining, pork is very lean so I choose to leave it on while in the oven. If this was a beef tenderloin I would trim it off.

From here it gets really complicated. You put the loin on a roasting rack or if you do not have one even a broiler pan will suffice. Then spray the loin lightly with some Pam on one side and then generously cover the Pam sprayed side with Cumin. I use the back of a spoon to spread the Cumin. It should look something like the photos below.

I place the whole thing into a pre-heated over at 325 until an instant read thermometer reads 155. That works out to be about 45-50 minutes give or take a few minutes. The asparagnus, I salt, pepper and a little olive oil in tin foil and placve into the over with about 20 mintues left. The same for the potaotes.

The finished loin should look something like this. I trim off the fat and slice onto a serving plate with the asparagus and the potatoes. I would pair the meal with a Pinot Noir.

Nothing like a close up shot of roasted pork loin!

Can You Spare Some Change?

2006-10-17T21:10:00.000-04:00

I have gotten some mixed feedback from running ads on the site. The basic feedback is either "yes I clicked the ads" or "you should not have ads on your blog".

The template did not have Adsense incorporated into it during the first few posts. After some toying around with the format and given the Adsense is free, I figured why not. Admittedly how many people need a sauce recipe from Target is still unknown to me. However, I have found some pretty cool places online that sell cooking and kitchen items that I did not know even existed.

If you are so inclined, I would appreciate you clicking the ads. In return, I will make a sincere effort to increase the amount of postings so there is at least enjoyable (hopefully) content for you to read as well. If the ads annoy you, I would sincerely be interested in understanding why-

Brine

2006-10-13T20:39:00.000-04:00

So the photo above may have limited humor with folks. As with most things, I find it amusing. When I was in high school having a Brine sticker on your car was a sign of cool in the prep school circles. Consider it an early 80s version of those little white European Stickers that everyone feels they need to have on their car these days. Nothing says "I am a tool" more then an Escalade from Boston with an OBX or a ACK sticker on it. First off, I doubt you are driving your 'Slade to North Caroline every weekend and secondly unless I fell asleep in 8th grade geography you can not drive to Nantucket (yes you can take the car ferry, but work with me people).

What does this have to do with food? Very good question!

A few weeks ago I made a pork tenderloin with the apple sauce that I wrote about last week. One of the key components of the recipe was 'brining' the pork tenderloin. If you do not know about brining you can get your fill at All About Brining. The jump from a lacrosse stick to making fun of ACK and BOBX stickers is the whole poser component.

Cook's Illustrated has been my go to cooking magazine for years. While there are better 'food' magazines there is no better cooking magazine. Cook's Illustrated has been advocating brining for close to 15 years. With the advent of Food Network and Alton Brown's almost religious devotion to brining it has become vogue in some cooking circles.

When I mention that I brined the shrimp or some pork, people always ask if I saw this episode of that or did I read about it here or there. People spend more time making sure the ration is correct then making good food.

The reality is that about 14 years ago I got a little cookbook on shellfish that recommended brining shrimp. Since then all the shrimp I have gotten I have brined and they are fantastic. The transition to pork and chicken was no big deal.

The point of all of this is that with cooking, food becomes an expression of who you are. Try new stuff but if all you are is a person driving around with a sticker for a place that is thousands of miles away you are probably better off ordering take out.

This is the brine for the pork tenderloin -

3/4 cup of brown sugar
3/4 cup of kosher salt
1 cup of hotwater
a bunch of ice cubes (until the hot water is cool)
a few bay leaves
apple juice
water

- Pour the salt and the brown sugar into a bowl and stir a bit with a fork. The hot water is added and the mixture is stirred until dissolved.
- Add ice cubes until the hot water has cooled. This is probably the most important part of any brine, as the hot water will start to cook your food if you do not cool it.
- Add the bay leaves
- Place the cut of pork into the brine
- Add apple juice to cover
-Place Saran wrap or the lid on the container and place into the refrigerator for at least 12 hours, I usually do about 20 hours, I make the brine prior to bed and then we cook the meal around dinner time.

Since space is limited at our house we do not have a special brine container or bucket for it. The most recent copy of Cook's Illustrated mentions brining in a XXL Ziplock but I have not tried it. Basically, I take the largest bowl I can find and there we go.

From pork chops to pork tenderloin we get rave reviews at our house. I suspect it is due to two things ; 1) the brine and 2) not over cooking the pork.

The next post will cover the actual tenderloin. What are your thoughts on brining and what has been successful for you?

How do you like them apples?

2006-10-05T13:00:00.000-04:00

I have heard of and even used that line prior to seeing "Good Will Hunting". The same way I drank Pinot Noir prior to watching "Sideways".

As with movies the thing that makes apple sauce is assembling the correct cast and letting them do their work. To much goofing around only ruins their intended purpose.

When it comes to making apple sauce, I do it they way I saw my parents make it. Boil apples until soft and then run them through a food mill. Fairly basic and fantastic results. The only thing that was added was cranberry soda as a liquid to boil down the apples.

You do not need to be super man to make apple sauce, you just need super apples.

We have no shortage of apples in New England so I usually go with what looks good at the farm stand. This is a photo of some of the assembled ingredients; apples, cranberry soda from Whole Foods (actually cranberry flavored seltzer) and apples. I went with a three apple combo of Gala, Honeycrisp and Fuji.

So here is the full ingredient list:

Apples
Water
Cranberry seltzer (soda is too sweet for the sauce in my opnion)

Wash and core the apples, leave the skin on

Once that has been done, my assistance puts the apples into the pot and adds the seltzer. (You can see her sippy cup in the background!) Don't worry about the size of the apples, though I would leave them on the large size so they are easy to fish out later. Add some water to cover the apples and you are done.

Cover and bring to a boil then reduce to a rapid bubble. Cook with lid partially open for 20 minutes give or take.

The cooked apples should yield under gentle pressure and not stick to a fork. The photo on the left is a fairly good representation of what the apples should look like. At this point remove from heat and you have basically two options: 1) use a slotted spoon to get the apples out of the pot and into your food mill or 2) pour the cooked apples into a colander.

I guess if you were getting real fancy, you could reduce the apple water and make into a glaze for a ham. I just pour it out.

Set up your food mill over a bowl and add the apples as full as you can into the mill. Below is sort of a before, during and after montage.

Before

During

After

The whole process really takes about 30 minutes. If I was making it myself, I would of put the pot on to boil with the liquid and added the apples as I cut them up. I did not do that this time because I wanted my daughter to help out. Once you are done server or refrigerate. The hot apple sauce from the stove get huge kudos. We served this with the pork roast which I will cover later on.

I just don't dig on swine, that's all.

2006-09-27T20:52:00.000-04:00

In a movie of many classic lines that one still cracks me up. The reality for me is that I do dig on swine.

Bacon = yummy
Pork Chops = yummy
Pork Chops and apple sauce = yummy
Pork Loin = yummy
Porky Pig = wierd

hubba hubba

This Saturday we are having family in town and I am making a pork tenderloin, yummy yumm yumm. Even the bubba'loo loves the tenderloin. Being good parents we of course lie and tell her it is chicken and she chows down.

Why do we lie?

Like most three year olds she is intent on only eating chicken. A little white lie never hurt anyone, except maybe the pig in this case.

The plan is to also make some home made apple sauce and brine the pork on Friday. Apples sauce is very easy to make and tastes (as with most things home made) much better than store bought.

Consider this posting the appetizer and I will follow up early next week with photos from the apple sauce and the tenderloin as well as how I brined the tenderloin.

To take a little liberty with Pulp Fiction :

Jules: I want you to go in that pantry, and find my apron.
Pumpkin: Which one is it?
Jules: It's the one that says Bad Motherfucker

Bad blogger bad!

2006-09-25T20:40:00.000-04:00

One of the things that has always annoyed me about blogs I read is that some are rarely updated. In the short time I have had Sauces and Stuff up and running my aim (notice aim, not goal) has been to update every Thursday. I missed it last week.

Between being in California early in the week and then having the High Holidays at the end of the week, the blog slipped to the low end of the list.

Bad blogger bad!

Here is an early week post of a recipe for a dipping sauce that has always gotten high praise around our house. I can not take credit for the recipe and I do not recall where it is from. One of those mythical recipes that gets handed down from part to party.

Let me know what you think -

Asian Dipping Sauce:

16 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 cups Asian fish sauce
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons dried red-pepper flakes

Since it is all about easy, I use a blender wand to mix / chop / blend the ingredients together. The great thing about the recipe is that if you like more garlic or more heat you can adjust accordingly. The recipe works great with chicken or even as a marinated for shrimp.

Serve in a bowl like this:

One of which you can buy at a very cool store called Lekker. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Broken Heart Cookies

2006-09-11T09:46:00.000-04:00

Most people in the North East and the Mid-Atlantic have some story or association with 9/11. I was flying to Newark on 9/11 and landed at the same time the first plane hit the World Trade Center. I made my way through northern New Jersey listening to Howard Stern and made my way to meet up with a co-worker. My wife who was in Boston at work only knew that there were some flights that may of may not of been going to or going from Boston to New York or Newark or here and there. I was not able to get to her but was able to relay a message to her that I was fine and it was not my plane.

What I remember about the day was how beautiful a day it was, much like it is in Boston today. My colleague and I took the slow trip back to Boston passing cars of people crying and listening to the radio. We got several views of Manhattan and the darken skyline. It broke my heart then and still does to this day.

We both know some people and certainly friends of people who died on 9/11. We should never forget. You can take a look here at Legacy.com so that we never forget the people who died on 9/11.

Here is a recipe for HEART-SHAPED SUGAR COOKIES that I took from Cooks.com. Please share them with someone you love, share them with everyone-

HEART-SHAPED SUGAR COOKIES

Printed from COOKS.COM

1 1/2 c. sifted powdered sugar
1 c. butter
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract
2 1/2 c. all purpose flour
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. cream of tartar

Mix sugar and butter. Add egg and flavorings and mix thoroughly. Measure flour and sift with dry ingredients and blend into butter mixture, mixing well. Refrigerate 2-3 hours. When ready to bake, divide dough in half and roll out to 3/16 inch thick on lightly floured pastry cloth.

Cut with floured heart shaped cookie cutter. Place on lightly greased baking sheet and bake in preheated 375 degree oven for 7-8 minutes. Let cool and frost with pink tinted easy creamy icing or put two baked heart shaped cookies together with red-tinted peppermint, flavored icing.

NOTE: If you prefer, cookies may be sprinkled with red sugar before baking.

EASY CREAMY ICING:

1 c. sifted powdered sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla or other flavoring
1 1/2 tsp. cream or 1 tbsp. water

Blend sugar, salt, and flavoring (try lemon, almond or peppermint). Add cream to make easy to spread. Tint with a few drops of red food coloring.

About halfway through

2006-09-09T17:04:00.000-04:00

I do enjoy McDonald's every once in awhile. However, about halfway through I realize what a mistake it was -

You can make you own sign at this site . Thanks to the best Vegan site I read, Vegan Lunch Box for the link!

The Great Cornholio

2006-09-06T21:56:00.000-04:00

I am The Great Cornholio

Mostly to my own and a few other people's amusement, I do a great Cornholio impression. The relevance of me telling you all this is yet another tie in to corn. While it is a stretch it is much better then Orville Redenbacher

( um can you say scary?)

I will take your popcorn and your little dog too!!!

I love popcorn, I even have a bowl I got for Christmas from my mother-in-law that has my initials on it just for popcorn. So while this is going to be a rather short post it is still a post that is near to my heart.

As a general rule microwave popcorn sucks - The one exception we have found is Little Bear Snack Foods. Their microwave popcorn is organic and you can get it without salt or without oil. It does not stink up your house or turn your microwave gross on the inside. If you need to have microwave popcorn on hand, this is the one to go with. I have been able to find it at Super Stop and Shops. Strangely enough I can not find it at Whole Foods, which has ever other Little Bear Snack Food product.

What I prefer to do is make popcorn the old fashioned way on my stove.

The way we roll is to use a Whirley Pop Popcorn Popper, the thing is amazing! I am on my second (the first I decided to run through the dishwasher, which they say not to do and I ruined it). It is fast and looks cool for a popcorn popper.

The best method to cook popcorn is pretty simple here is what I do and I get pretty high marks from the three year old crowd.

- Use about 2 tablespoons of crisco oil
- Roughly 3/4 cup of corn. I say roughly because different brands pop better then sum.
- Any type of corn. I have used the fancy brands and the cheap bags you get at the store. The difference is usually how many kernels are left over. Stick with one brand and you will know how it pops.
-About 1 tablespoon of butter
-Salt to taste

What I do is add it all together at the start. Then over medium heat I start cranking the Whirley popper. That is it , serve and enjoy!

Robble robble robble

2006-08-30T16:17:00.000-04:00

An often overlooked comic / cartoon / mascot character is the Hamburgla r. He should be that parton saint of hamburgers all over the word. The guy spent his time stealing hamburgers but everyone loved still loved him. If you had to choose between Wimpy from Popeye or the Hamburglar how could there even be a contest! The Hamburglar would always win.

The reason I mention this is that we were cooking up some serious hamburgers the other night. I am not sure why the dinner menu rarely consists of hamburgers but they are something that we love to have. As much as I enjoy reading the Vegan Lunch Box , if it moos it is tasty in my book.

Some people get very funny with their burgers,

We don't roll that way (oh the burger humor!) but it did make for a good photo-

So this is how we pull together and top a burger at our household-

-Keep it normal. What I mean by that is that it is a hamburger, some people over think these things.

-Get hamburger with fat in it. People always complain about the dryness of their hamburgers at home and they do because they buy 90% or 95% lean meat. Short of grinding your own meat, buy at least 85% fat.

-If you buy store bought cheese (non-deli or non-block o'cheese) make sure that the slices you buy have cheese listed as the first ingredient. Seems funny that cheese would not have cheese in it, but until I read it in Cooks Illustrated I had no idea and now my cheese slices are very yummy.

-I am not gonna get into how to cook a burger other then don't play with it on the grill. If you want to read how to grill a burger Weber has some outstanding grill books. The basic things I would say is to 1) keep all your burgers the same size and shape (I have actually used a scale to weigh burgers for large parties so they would all cook the same) 2) press a little thumb mark in the middle 3) flip them once This is how we made up the burgers the other night that came out looking like this-

We went with that we had in the house which was the following- a bag of mixed greens, cherry tomatoes and cheddar slices, for toppings we went with mayo , ketchup and yellow mustard.

-We sliced the tomatoes thin so we could spread them out and placed them on the burger under (prior) to the cheese

-We layered the mixed greens (you can see some sticking out the back
-Put mayo on the bottom
-Put mustard and ketchup on top
-I lightly toasted my bun

We served it all up with a side of asparagus and corn we made on the grill.

Overall it was very easy to make, all done on the grill and very very delicious!

Thoughts comments?

Corny

2006-08-23T19:06:00.000-04:00

I love corn.

Popcorn especially, but we can cover that at some other point. What I am talking about is corn on the cob. Seems everyone else loves it too. In fact you can even get a lively, fun-filled educational CD-ROM call Crazy About Corn for all the little ones you got on the farm. You can never start to early on brainwashing your children about corn. I for one will welcome our new corn overlords.

There are even websites that the whole purpose it to teach you how to cook corn on the cob.

If the photo of the flames on the Weber

is not enough to scare you away I don't know what is. Aside from the Weber, it is actually a good site and they most really love corn.

Here is where I take exception with the Bobby Flays of the world and even the how to cook corn on the cob site. No way I am going to soak corn for an hour before I grill it. This is not the barbecue version of corn where the need to cook it slow and low prevails. The recipe for microwaved corn on the cob has you soaking the corn for 30 minutes? WTF, why use a microwave if the prep time alone is 30 minutes, then you microwave for 10 minutes and then let it sit for another 10?

Here is how to make corn. It never fails and the only time we go old school and boil it is if we can not get to the grill.

Buy corn - don't stand around and play with it and strip it all naked and then put it back and grab another. Pick an ear and put it in your bag.
Leave it along, don't shuck it until you are ready to cook it.
I like to clean it up a bit but you can either a) leave it alone b) shuck it or c) do what I do, trim the ends with a chefs knife and then shuck it.
Place it in tinfoil with a little slice of butter. What kind of butter? What ever kind you have.
Put it on the grill and cook the rest of your dinner. Turn it every once and awhile.

That is about it. Here are some handy before and after photos. It is also nice to include some salt, pepper, butter etc if people like that. A fresh stick of butter it good to roll the corn on.

A lovely before shot!

Aww, aren't they so cute and tasty!

You don't make friends with salad

2006-08-10T21:40:00.001-04:00

Not sure what it says that I have chosen to quote Homer Simpson to start this post off but it certainly says something. At my house we are actually big fans of salads. The little one gets salad with dinner and actively asks for them both at restaurants and at home.

Salads are also way easy to make and are great when you have friends over or company. They get everyone to the table and if you are serving something like steak, it allows time for the steak to cool, which you should do.

I have been playing around with how to make basic salads a bit fancier to serve when company is over and a simple caprese salad seems like a good start.

Caprese salads usually are served to look something like this-

Pretty boring and predictable, I wanted to do something that would be quick but also have great presentation to it. So setting aside my lack of food photography skills (any help here would be appreciated), I came up with this.

If you live in Boston and have eaten at a restaurant in the last 10 years most of your food is vertical. I can not claim huge amounts of creativity with this, but I like how the shape of the salad is an extension of the shape of the tomato. If I really wanted to get fancy, I could have pealed the tomato and then used the pealed skin to make a tulip for the top of the stack.

The basic elements of a Caprese salad are as follows –

fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced 1/4-inch thick
ripe tomatoes, sliced 1/4-inch thick
fresh basil leaves
Salt and freshly ground pepper
extra-virgin olive oil

Balsamic vinegar (I like to add it)

Here is my variation -

Start by making it into more of a salad by using a mix of baby spinach, mixed greens and basil around the tomato stack.

-Take the stem part out of the tomato and then slice it as evenly as possible.

-Use fresh mozzarella, not the kind you get at Stop and Shop. If you do not have a good cheese shop, Whole Foods can hook you up.

-Pull apart the mozzarella ball into even layers of cheese

-Assemble layers of tomato and cheese until you basically have rebuilt the tomato

-Sprinkle a little bit of kosher salt, fresh pepper and a little bit of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Why it is not salty at all

2006-08-03T21:14:00.000-04:00

The plan was to make some pizza on the grill. As with most plans, things changed, and we were back again in NY. This time upstate, rather then Long Island, but New York nonetheless. We try to cover each end of a state, and New York seemed to be more of a challenge than Rhode Island.

Upstate NY is a beautiful place. We were there for a family event and along the way we had a drink and some appetizers in the town of Skaneateles. The Finger Lakes are fresh water lakes (as far as I know) but it got me thinking about salt water. When it comes to cooking everyone has a fancy salt they bought and have no idea what to do with; either they spent way too much on it (so they never use it) or they use it way too much.

The best bet for salt to cook with has to be plain 'ol Kosher Salt. I like Morton Kosher Salt.

If you are gonna cook with something why not go old school with something that is good on a Biblical scale. The top ways to use kosher salt is probably on steak (beef, or if you are French, I would like to order the cow (inside joke)) or to brine stuff. We can cover brining at a later date. Do a google on kosher salt and you get about 2,470,000 hits!

There are a whole bunch of online and cookbook resources that get into how to salt your steak bla bla bla, so I am not going to get into that. Here is what I will recommend-

When you do get your grill going and you generously salt and pepper the cut of beef, I would follow up with some rosemary, thyme, sage, and marjoram on each steak.

Even better, I grind equal amounts of salt and pepper and add rosemary, thyme, sage, and marjoram to keep on hand. It kicks ass, no one can place the flavors and it is a great way to set your grilling apart.