Baby Back Ribs

It's beginning to get nice - you can feel it - The days are getting a little longer, the sun on occasion is beginning to show itself. Heck, baseball begins next week! With all of this, you think summer can't be too far off - Along those lines, I was getting a hankering for some summer food. We hadn't done ribs all winter. Unbelievable when you think about -  so the time was right. Ribs were on sale, I took a Friday off - Everything was in proper alignment.  You can click on the images to increase their size so you can see whats going on.

We will be making a rub and sauce - We're doing nothing out of the ordinary - Just the standard house, go-to recipe. Old school, baby! It's like 1974. We listen to the same music, we eat the same food, so something good must be going on.

Let's get busy on the rub first. My biggest gripe with store bought rubs is that  they are too dang salty. They are like 50% salt - Yuck.  I prefer a spicy and lightly salty rub. There is no real recipe for these things, you sort of look at what you got and go for it. I like to use dried Guajillo, New Mexican, and chile arbol for the heat. Also dried garlic, onion, corridor seed, ground pepper and salt - 

Grind it all up, mix it up, and we have something that looks like the above.

After removing the membrane off the back of the slabs, we hit them with a little extra virgin olive oil and the rub.

 

We're doing these on the Weber smoker at 235 degrees. We added a couple chucks of peach wood- The above is after about 3 hours. Got a little bark going on at this point. We begin to spritz them with apple juice every so often to keep them moist.

While the meat is doing its thing , we get busy on the sauce. I guess this is what they call a Kansas City type sauce. It's tomato based with sugar. I like to use palm sugar for the sauce. 

After about 5 hours, they get sauced, and flipped a couple of times for about 30 minutes.

 

Served there with some 'tater wedges - Summer really is coming - You can taste it!

Chile Rellenos

Making Chili Rellenos is an operation. We hadn't made them in years, but got the inkling a couple of weeks ago. We had a nice piece of pork so we thought we go for it. We base our recipe off the classic Diana Kennedy recipe - Ours take of course is geared to prepared outside.

We start out with some stuff. There's quite a few steps in the process and it really takes about all afternoon to do.

The recipe is traditional - Well, before we get our hands on it anyway. It calls for the pork to be boiled and then simmered - Not happening! We need to get some smoke on that thing first - On the WSM for about 3 hours with peach wood...

Then chopped up and into some cast iron - We need some pork induced liquid so we need to submerge and simmer for a bit ...

Cut up the pork,  add some onion, peppers, spices  and chicken broth  - Into the  pot and back on to the cooker.

We let it go another hour or so - just simmering to mingle the flavors, and get some of that sweet  pork juice a flowing.

While the pork simmers, we get busy on the chilies and tomato broth. Blister the peppers then into a bag to steam prior to peeling.

Meanwhile, we simmer the broth and get some beans going - Right now, the kitchen is beginning to smell pretty dang good.

Next we haul the pork in, and add some more deliciousness to the mix - Almonds, raisins, roasted tomato and spices.

After peeling the peppers, we make an insertion, and carefully remove the seeds and membrane from inside. Then they are stuffed with the pork.  At this point they are dusted with flour and dipped in a egg white bath and gently fried - Oh yea!

Smother in the tomato broth and served with rice and beans - These are tasty treat!

Smoked Turkey Breast

We ended up with an extra turkey over Thanksgiving - I don't remember the exact situation, but  I think we had one larger one,(15 lbs)  then decided based on the number of folks that we were hosting thought it better to do 2 smaller ones - something like that - Anyway, the result being, we had a very nice 15 pound Diestel Ranch organic turkey sitting in our freezer. It was too big for just me and Doris, so we decided to do a couple of different things with it.  We have smoked breasts before, but we've never done the entire process of boning and prepping them - We now had the proper opportunity. click on the images to enlarge and get a good view of whats going on.

Here she is - I think its a she anyway. We did our typical brine regiment - For a 15 pound bird, it takes about 24-30 hours to brine.

The idea was to remove the breast meat intact. To do this, first the legs and wings come off. Sometimes its easier if you remove the wishbone first,  but knowing where it is and that you have to deal with it is usually enough. Above is the result - Seemed to work just fine. We prepared the wings, legs & thighs for dinner -  We made broth out of the carcuss.

We skinned the breast, and then seasoned the insides with a mix of crushed brown mustard, rosemary, garlic, sage, thyme and bay leaves.

This is where it got a bit interesting. We had some netting, but the breast wad wasn't cooperating. the netting seemed too small of a diameter, as we were having trouble getting it over the breast.We tried a couple of different approaches, and then Doris came up with this handy devise. A cup with the netting stretched over it. We essentially stuck the the breast in the cup, and just fed the netting over  - This worked great - I tell yea, it was looking a bit grim there for a bit.

Booyah! success - we secured the ends - seasoned the outside, and we were about ready to go.

Arch had hooked us with the smoking rack at Christmas for the Weber smoker - It worked great!

sliced and ready to go - Turkey sandwich  anyone? - 

Enchiladas de Chili Ajo

This is a recipe out of Saveur that we've made a couple of times now and really enjoy. The complex flavors of the sauce along with the smokiness of chicken create a wonderful balance  - As with most things we do around here, the recipe is modified to be prepared (mostly) outside, and tweaked to our liking - Simply click on the picture to enlarge -

We start with brining 3 chickens. To each tub we added a bunch of parsley, a peeled & smashed head's worth of garlic, a couple of halved lemons and some toasted pepper corns. I like a 17 degree brine, which we let go for about 12 hours. A 17 degree brine can be calculated at 177 grams of salt and 86 grams of sugar per gallon of water.

The chickens have come out of the brine, and have been dried and rested for another 12 hours. Next they get a sprinkle of a salt-less rub created from Chile de Arbol, Chile Guajillo, New Mexican "Anaheim" Chile, onion, Mexican oregano, black pepper and garlic. No salt in the rub, as the brine get the meat to the proper saltiness. We then hit them with some cilantro / garlic butter before sticking them out on the Weber smoker.

 

Here they are after about an hour and half at about 325. You really don't have to do anything to except maybe hit them with some of the butter once or twice - you don't even really need to do that. 

...and done! They probably went for 2+ hours - we do them to temperature. Now let them cool, wrap them up and into the fridge over night before shredding.

 

Shred it up, and get ready to start into the sauce..

A can of enchilada sauce cost about 67 cents, but we ae going to prove that making your own is really worth the time and effort. I was a bit dubious the first time we did this,  but really, there is no comparison. We start with fresh veggies and dried guajillo chiles -

Head outside and get the the Weber going. It was another gorgeous day - We've had the mildest winter since we've lived here- I'm not complaining! 

We cored the Roma's and added a chuck of mulberry wood cooked the veggies. The skin comes right off the tomatoes. We let these go until everything is soft and chard - about 15 minutes. 

After the veggies are done, we get going on the chiles - I like to stem and seed them before re-hydrating them. I think the recipe says to do it after. That seems messy to me.  Heat them in a pan for a couple of minutes to release the aroma, then pour boiling water over to just cover them and let them get soft.

After blending up all the sauce ingredients and straining, you are left with this!  This is some good stuff - 

All that is left is to assemble the enchiladas and serve with rice and beans - enjoy!

Holiday Roast Beast

Ah yes, Christmas in Trout Lake - It's usually about shoveling snow and trying to staying warm - Not this year. We had an absolutely gorgeous day - Sunny, albeit cool - but a very nice day, indeed. We had been in San Francisco the weekend prior catching up with  friends and  seeing the almost annual Los Lobos Fillmore shows. We got back in to town Monday, and headed to the butcher in Portland on the way back from the airport - Bad move! The place was insanely packed - There was easily 200 people in there so we bailed, and headed to Hood River and to the grocery without much of a game plan. We left with a roast, a sack of spuds and some green beans. This is what went down. (Remember, to increase the size of the picture, just click it!)

We scored a Kobe roast. I've never cooked Kobe, I'm not even sure I've ever ordered it, but it was the holidays, so I figured we'd check out what all the fuss was about.

The marbling looked good, the color looked good. We stuck with what we liked and rubbed it down with a mixture of garlic, fresh thyme, fresh rosemary, and some Back of the Yards Garlic Pepper Butcher's Rub from the Spice House in Evanston. Love that stuff.

Threw it on the WSM at about 280 degrees - figured it would take a couple of hours.  We pulled it when we reached an internal temperature of 127 degrees and let it set for about 30 minutes.

 

Carved it up ....

...and served with au gratin spuds and green beans. We made Julia's horseradish sauce for the meat...The spud recipe is also from the Julia Child's  'Way to Cook' book. I like that one - All in all a great day- Peaceful, also basketball full, and a delicious dinner!  These 2 were pretty glad that we had returned:

Sleepy Dog 1

Sleepy Dog 2

Garlic Bacon

(We did these bacons back in late October) - As winter nears, it was time to stock the freezer with bacon. We wanted to try something a little different, so Doris suggested we try to make super extra garlicy bacon. How could I refuse? We started out with the basics and the added some stuff: (please click on he pictures to enlarge)

We had purchased several heads of some incredible local garlic. These heads were large, meaty,  and dripping with goodness. Probably the best garlic of the season.

It was a two step process. We would salt the bellies, and then create a paste and rub on top. The paste included bay leaf, maple sugar for a sweet for the holidays, black pepper and garlic -  Lots of garlic! -

We have us here 2 Carlton Farms bellies. These are some of the best bellies available to us. They weigh in around 12 to 13 pounds a side.

We start with the curing salt, kosher salt and sugar. An even dredge on both sides will do it.

Next comes the garlic paste. We just rubbed it on both sides. The curing process will create liquid, that will help take the paste. At least that's the plan.  After they get pasted, into to the fridge with them to cure. We usually let them go about 2 weeks.  During this time, we'll flip them around a couple of times, while brushing the paste as the liquid develops.

After a couple of weeks we have this. Umm, doesn't that look simply delicious. Well maybe not yet, but it is doing exactly as I'd hoped. Juices are being pulled from the belly from by the salt and  being introduced to the garlic paste.  Then, via reverse osmosis (or something) the liquid is  sucked back into the pig sides- This is good stuff!

 
So here we are after 2 weeks in the cure / brine. We rinse the bellies, pat dry, then back into the fridge for  about 3 days to  dry to a nice tact.

It is the perfect morning to get these sides going. its about 20 degrees - with a forecast of temps of  mid to high 30's. This will make our job easy keeping the smoker around 120-130 degrees.

Got the fire going around 5:30, and got them in around 6:30. We are using 100% apple wood for these two

 Here they are about 10 hours in. We've been keeping them at about 125 degrees. They are coming along nicely. I figured I would just let them go until I was ready to go to bed. I pulled them around 9:00PM. They were on the smoke for about 14 hours or so.

And done! these are looking (and smelling) pretty good - Next they go into the fridge again uncovered for 3 days to rest.

 After a few days of drying, we cut the skin off, slice and package. This was some really nice tasting bacon. Maybe too garlic-y  for some, but  we really like it - good thing, as we plenty to last us through the winter.