Carne Asada

It was Santana's birthday, yesterday (7/20) - What better way to celebrate the mystical one's birthday than doing some carne asada. Carne asada can mean just about anything with meat, but traditionally its done with flank steak which is what we chose to do. (You can click on the images to increase their size.)

When I think carne asada, I envision meat - I think of a big hunking slab of flesh. However, as it turned out, it seemed like I spent most of my time chopping up vegetables!

Here's the fixin's for the flank steak marinade. Cilantro, garlic, jalapenos, green onion, shallots, ground Guajillo & Ancho pepper, black pepper, salt, lime juice and grape seed oil.

while the meat was marinating, I started in on the salsa. Cored romas, jalapenos, garlic, Anaheim's, corn and red onion to start. I pulsed the toms, garlic and half the onion in the Cuisinart, then added the corn, the remaining onion, cilantro, lime juice, salt and cumin - This turned out very good.

Time to throw this bad boy on. I had some leftover garlic, cilantro and jalapenos, so I made some flavored butter.

These guys don't take too long - about 10-15 minutes total - I like to butter them to help with the crust, and it really adds to the sheen too.

A little closer up - Mumm... meat!

 

After taking off the meat, we let it rest for a couple of minutes - just enough time to do a batch of panko covered avocado wedges on the gasser. Many people believe panko originated in Japan, but actually the earliest known recorded use of panko was by the Huichol Indians of western Mexico - well, not really, but these things are too good to pass on!

Your plate! Served with beans (canned sorry!) Jasmine rice - 

Dungeness Crab Cakes

The humble crab cake. How can anything so simple be so delicious? White bread, a few chopped up veggies, mustard and a pound of crab - That's it. Just click on the picture to increase its size.

The keys to good crab cakes is cheap white bread  and to make sure they don't get gummy. You want to rinse the crab, and then gently press it through cheese cloth in a colander. The veggies should be pressed as well.

Mix the crab and the vegetables, and spicy mayo well, by gently - you want to try to keep the bigger peices of crab intact.

  After forming the patties, its good to let them rest. If you can wait, its better to let them site overnight. They are delicate and they seem to firm up just enough over night.

We fired up the gasser, and got some green beans going

 Did a little cast iron action. This is a  pan that Doris' mom gave us while visiting. It was actually Doris' grandmother's. Berea KY to New Castle, IN to Trout Lake WA. That pan has had a serious workout.

 The finished product.

Fish Sauce Baby Backs

We recently went up to Seattle for a night to see some friends of ours band play. It was a quick trip, leaving Saturday afternoon, and coming home Sunday afternoon.  We took advantage of the opportunity while up there to hit the Asian market and picked up a few things that we can't get living down here in Klickitat County.

We also stopped by Gartners, our old school meat market in Portland and did a little shopping. I went a little ape crazy in there, and scored and bunch a stuff.  Sometimes I just can't help myself!!

We got home Sunday evening, and immediately got to work. We had picked up some palm sugar, and several bottles of fish sauce which are key ingredients, for among other things,  fish sauce ribs. Coincidentally, I picked up severally slabs of ribs at Gartners. Two worlds were about to collide - The Freaky Asian ingredient world and old schhool world of BBQ.

We've made these before and really enjoyed them. Why they certainly are not an everyday menu item, I do like having them in the rotation, and enjoy making them for guests, as the recipe is sort of unique and few have had them before. Above we have garlic, shallots, Indian long pepper, the fish sauce and those bun looking things up front is the palm sugar.

Just look at these slabs- These are a work of art (Remember, you can click on all the pictures to enlarge.) These things are monsters, and an all natural, non-enhanced product from Carlton farms in Oregon. They are the goods.

 

 Sorry, I had show one more shot of these guys- just because they are so purty! 

OK, now down to business. We trimmed the slabs,  removing the membrane from ribs along with any  unnecessary fat....that seems like a oxymoron - Unnecessary fat.. Anyway, we soaked the ribs in pepper, garlic, the shallots and fish sauce overnight for about 10 hours.

 Memorial Day in the Northwest means a couple of things. We don't have work, and its going to rain. This year was no different, but we're a fairly hardly lot when it comes to outdoor cooking. We roll with it.



On they go - We cook them at about 250 degrees  for 3 hours. We did a few chunks of peach wood. We flipped and spritzed them after about 1:45 minutes with  a mixture of water and  a splash of  fish sauce. After 3 hours we wrapped them on foil and added about 2 tablespoons of the spirtz  stuff, and some butter. We returned them to the cooker for another 2 hours.

After 2 hours we unwrapped them  and hit them with a reduction sauce of more fish sauce, water and palm sugar. they are beginning to look pretty tasty - This is a good thing because the Hawks game will be coming on soon and we need some game 6 rally slabs.

 Well, typically I like to provide a plated shot of the finished product. The Hawks came on, and I said forget it, lets eat. I can tell you they were very good, and we had the Thug Kitchen vegan potato salad - I can also happily report that the Hawks won!

Momofuku Wings

This past weekend, we made the wings out of David Chang's cookbook Momofuku. There was definitely an amount effort involved,  but we were up for the challenge, and certainly the hard work paid off in the end. It all started the previous weekend when we rendered more lard.

This is a hunk of leaf lard from last falls pig. We cut it up and stuck it in the crock pot. The process took about 7 hours to render. We put the fat in the fridge for the week.

The following Saturday we started by brining the wings. The recipe called for a very strong brine. We dialed it back to about 17 degree brine which is what i prefer for chicken. The brine mixture contained salt and sugar. We let the wings soak for about 4.5 hours. We then drained and rinsed. While the wings were brining we prepared the smoker

                  We cold smoked the wings at about 110 degrees on the WSM for about an hour or so

 While the wings were smoking, we started to prepare the tare'. This consisted of the wing tips, mirin, soy sauce and sake.We sauteed the tips until golden brown.

We then  added the liquids and simmered for 
about 40 minutes

the wings go into cast iron the fat

On to the fire. The temperature is about 200 degrees. We'll confit them for about 40 minutes

 After pulling from the confit, we let the wings drain and then saute until golder brown

..And served!  

Pork Jowl Confit

I had been up in Seattle recently and returned with a Cryovac sack of 5 pork jowls. I had never prepared jowls before, so I stuck them in the freezer and started to do a little research. After a little reading, Guanciale seemed like the most popular way of jowl preparation. With it being the middle of summer  I didn't think we had place in the house cool enough to let them air cure. I'll save that adventure for the fall or winter. I did learn that jowls are similar to belly. I've been wanting to do a confit of belly, so I decided to go for it with the jowls. I had a lot of pig fat in the freezer from trimmings so the first thing that needed to be done was to render us some fat. 

The above is bowl of cut up trimmings from various bacon cooks. There's also some fat back in there as well. All in all, I had about 6 pounds of fat.

I didn't want to stink up the house, so we rendered it out on the driveway in a Lodge pot. This process may seem a bit gross,  but rendering your own fat is a time honored tradition, and the stuff you make at home is actually quite good for you and isn't hydrogenated. 

 It's lower in saturated fat than butter and high in vitamin D. It's just got a bad name over the years, but I've got a feeling it will be making  more of come back as people  continue to pay more attention to what they eat.It's a simple process, and the results are good!

After a couple of hours, the fat begins to render. Its sort of a slow operation, but goodness takes time! The finish product, when cooled, is milky white. 

With the fat rendered, it was time to turn our attention to the jowls. I decided to do three of them and save the remaining  two for the winter. We had  made a simple brine of salt and sugar, and left the jowls alone for about 8 hours.

Heck, they look harmless enough. 

The 3 of them fit nicely in the Dutch oven. We covered them with the lard and headed outside to the smoker.

We placed the Dutch oven in a 200 degree smoker and let the jowls cook for about 6 hours. Afterwards, we brought them in  and let them cool for a bit before transferring  into a dish.  We then covered them with the fat and plastic wrap. We placed a couple of rocks on top of the plastic to help flatten the jowls out and stuck them in the fridge to cool and firm them up. In hindsight, I think  maybe we should have anchored them down some how during the cooking process to try to keep them flat as they had a tendency to curl. I'm not sure if that would have helped, or maybe been a hindrance, as they were very tender when done cooking. They may have fallen apart under too much weight - I'm not sure.

The next day, we took them out of the fridge, reserved the lard and cut the jowls into squares. To prepare them, we sauteed fat side down for about 20 minutes, then baked for another 15 on the Weber gas grill. We served them with grilled scallops and some nice sides. Not bad for a first attempt!

Driveway Fried Chicken

We love fried chicken. Come to think of it, who doesn't?  Fried chicken defines summer in the USA. The only downsides being it can be a mess to make and tends to stink up the kitchen. Not a problem! We cook our chicken outside. It's more fun that way, and you never end up needing to wash the  walls or with your kitchen smelling like a Popeye's in Lake Charles, LA.

Good fried chicken starts with good chicken. We prefer smaller, free range birds in the 3.5 to 4 pound range.  Those aren't always easy to track down, but anything under 4.5 pounds will work fine. Once you have a chicken we think it's a good idea to brine it. There's no question that brining helps retain moisture; however you run the risk of winding up with too salty of a bird if not properly brined. Our experience proves that most brining recipes tend to be generic and provide inconsistent results. Because of this, we decided to take matters into our own hands and have been attempting to dial in the prefect balance of salt, sugar & lemon balanced against the weight of the bird and soaking time  forour chicken brine.

Brine is measured in degrees. To accurately measure the degree of the brine, one needs a salinometer. The corresponding charts list the amount of salt in weight required to raise the saline reading to the desired level.  Typically a chicken is brined between 17 to 22 degrees, with  the higher number indicating a saltier brine. We prefer less salty,  so we've been shooting for a brine in the 16-17 degree range. It's important to keep in mind that the charts indicate the degree when only salt is added to the water. Using other spices or sugar effects the reading. For example, when measuring the brine after only sugar has been added, the degree rises. We start with all our other spices prior to adding the salt. Then we just add salt until the salinometer reads 17.

With the brine prepared, it's a good idea to let it sit in the fridge over night prior to soaking the bird. The chicken will then brine in the fridge for 10-12 hours. Prior to frying we'll take it out of the fridge and let it warm up to just about room temperature.

Outside, we prepare the fire for frying, and set up the dipping station. We'll first dip in a mixture of flour, cayenne, garlic power & onion powder, followed by a dip into butter milk, then into a second dipping bowl of the flower and spice mix.

We were shooting for about 320 degrees. Another important element to good fried chicken is to keep the fire hot! - This is fairly easy to accomplish with the propane cooker. Those things can put off some heat, and can adjust the heat of the oil rather quickly  Just make sure you use a thermometer, and keep an eye on it.  With the cooker dialed in, just let the magic happen.

Roxy being the good dog she is, keeps a careful eye on the chicken for us as it comes out of the peanut oil.

     It came out well. Crunchy - not too salty with just enough cayenne heat!

                                                                            

plated with some summer sides -

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Peach Baby Back Ribs

We had a couple of slabs of really nice natural baby backs that have been staring me in the eye every time I've opened up the freezer over the past couple of months - It was a gorgeous weekend here in Trout Lake, so it seemed like the opportune time to prepare some ribs!

I've been working on a peach barbeque sauce, trying to perfectly balance the sauce with a rub - The idea was, to have a nice sweet layer on top of a spicy but not too spicy bark layer on the ribs. I'm getting close. For the rub I combined  & ground:

• 10 g seeded & deveined chile de arbol
• 1 tbsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp yellow mustard seeds
• 1 tsp dehydrated onion
• 1/2 tsp whole coriander seeds

 then added:

• 1 tsp ground ancho chili
• 1 tsp ground guajillo chili
• 2 tbsp brown sugar 
• 2 tsp kosher salt

There really isn't too much to the sauce. Doris freezes peaches each year  so I just grab a bag of frozen peaches, add some agave nectar, along with some chile arbol pieces - I like to have the flecks in the sauce. Once that's mixed together, I hit it with the immersion blender then let simmer for about 1/2 an hour. I'll then thin the sauce down with apple juice.

After trimming the ribs, removing any unnecessary fat and squaring them up a bit,  we apply the rub. We like to apply one side at a time, leaving some time for the rub to sweat in before flipping them over and doing the other side.

Once the rub has been applied we let them sit for a couple of hours to soak up all the goodness. During this time we start prepping the fire and start chopping up stuff for the beans. Doris is making her barbeque buttermilk rolls, so its also time to mix the dough and let it begin to rise.

With the fire now at 250 degrees, the ribs go on at about 12:30. Today we will be smoking on a mix of apple and peach wood. We'll leave these guys alone, only  opening up every hour to flip them for the first 3 hours. Next up are the beans:

                                     

 
We start by sautéing some bacon pieces, and then add chopped garlic, onion and  jalapeno. Once those have cooked for a bit we add the beans, brown sugar, barbeque sauce  and molasses. The beans will simmer for the remainder of the afternoon.

While the ribs and beans are cooking, Doris bakes the rolls on the Weber gas grill. The gas grill works well for baking if you use indirect heat and raise the baking pan or tray off the grate. These look about done, and are ready to come off.

Here are the ribs at 3 hours. At this point we will wrap them in foil, adding a couple of tablespoons of apple juice, some agave nectar and brown sugar. They go back on for about another 1.5 hours before we unwrap them, and hit them with the peach barbeque sauce.

After hitting them with the sauce we let it set, flipping them a couple of times.

Ready to come off and serve: